DadCooksDinner Newsletter - June 2026

Deviled Eggs for Parties

One of my favorite pressure cooker tricks is Instant Pot 5-5-5 hard-cooked eggs. 5 minutes at high, 5 minutes natural release, 5 minutes in an ice bath, and you have perfect hard boiled eggs. And what I really love about the 5-5-5 technique is how easy it makes deviled eggs.

Deviled eggs are my answer to “what should I bring to the party/potluck/picnic?” Everyone loves deviled eggs - they taste great and add a fancy touch - and they’re easy. I hard-cook a dozen eggs, giving me 24 egg halves, perfect for two different styles of deviled eggs. Even better, I can prep up to a day ahead, and finish them on-site:

• Peel the eggs, split them, remove the yolks, and make the filling
• Store the egg halves in a gallon zip-top bag lined with paper towels
• Store the filling in piping bags with the ends twisted closed (and held with a rubber band if I’m worried about them getting jostled around in transport)
• When I get to the party, I slide the egg halves onto my colorful deviled egg trays, snip the end off the piping bags, and pipe them out so they’re ready to serve fresh.

There are two pieces of essential equipment to make Instant Pot deviled eggs:

• A steaming basket or bakeware sling, to lift the eggs above the water in the pot
• Piping bags (and tips) to pipe the filling into the eggs.

Steaming Basket/Sling: Technically, you can use the wire rack that came with your Instant Pot to hard-cook eggs. The problem is getting the eggs out of the pot - reaching down in there to grab boiling-hot eggs is hard. A steaming basket or bakeware sling with a bowl shape or a lip means you can lift all the eggs from the pot, and gently transfer them to the waiting ice water bath. (I prefer the bakeware sling - the hex bottom holds the eggs vertically, so I can fit them in a single layer.)

Piping bags: I used to improvise my piping bags out of quart sized zip-top bags. Push the egg filling down to a bottom corner, snip off the corner with scissors, and I had an improvised piping bag. Now all the zip-top bags are “self-standing”, which means they don’t have corners that come to a point, making them useless for piping.

I bought a box of disposable piping bags and a set of piping tips, and then had to figure out which size of tip is big enough for chunks of pickle relish to fit through. (Round 2A tips are my favorite.) Just make sure to put the tip in the bag before you start adding the filling. (I’ve never made that mistake…yeah, who am I kidding, I still do it all the time.)

What kind of deviled eggs? Let me count the ways…

​Traditional deviled eggs are the obvious choice, and wasabi deviled eggs are my personal favorite, with a strong kick of wasabi heat and sweet pickled ginger. Beet-pickled deviled eggs are beautiful with their pink color, or you can do a Green Eggs vibe with pesto deviled eggs or guacamole deviled eggs.

I have a dozen different Deviled Egg recipes to choose from on my blog: Instant Pot Deviled Eggs recipe list. (Which is the perfect number of recipes when you’re talking about eggs. I don’t expect the perfect number to last - whenever I find a new deviled egg recipe, I add it to the list.)

What are your favorite kind of deviled eggs? Any recipes I’m missing? Drop me an email and let me know.

Weird Carrot

Weird Carrot? Weird Carrot.

May Posts Roundup

Instant Pot Cheddar Cheese Risotto

Risotto is easy in a pressure cooker - you can skip the half hour of slowly stirring broth into the rice. Lock the lid and it’s ready with six minutes under pressure.

​Instant Pot Cheddar Cheese Risotto - Recipe​

Instant Pot Shrimp Etouffee

An update of an old classic, and an old recipe of mine - New Orleans shrimp stew.

​Instant Pot Shrimp Etouffee - Recipe​

Instant Pot Chicken Pot Pie Soup (with Rotisserie Chicken Broth)

I saw Chicken Pot Pie soup at a local Heinen’s grocery store, and had to try making it myself.

​Instant Pot Chicken Pot Pie Soup (with Rotisserie Chicken Broth) - Recipe​

Sous Vide Rack of Lamb with Dijon Bread Crumb Crust

Another update of an old recipe, one I make every Mother’s day.

​Sous Vide Rack of Lamb with Dijon Bread Crumb Crust - Recipe​

Q&A

Why two rounds of pressure cooking in my rotisserie chicken soups?

A question about my Instant Pot Rotisserie Chicken Noodle Soup from reader Mery:

Mery,

The 4 minutes at the end is needed to pressure cook the soup. I split the pressure cooking in my Rotisserie Chicken Soups into two phases:

1. Make the broth - 1 hour at high pressure with the chicken carcass and some aromatics
2. Make the soup - 4 minutes at high pressure with the soup ingredients

Why do I split them up? Because homemade broth needs to be a separate step.

1 hour of pressure cooking pulls the flavor from the chicken into the broth. If we have other ingredients, the same happens to them (if they don’t disintegrate in the long pressure cooking time.) After pressure cooking the broth, I strain out and discard the solids from the pot; they have given their all to the broth. This is also why I pull the breasts off of the rotisserie chicken and save them for later - I don’t want them to lose their flavor into the broth, I want to save it for the soup.

(That said, I’ll pick meat off of the chicken carcass when I’m straining the broth, as a chef’s treat. I can taste the difference, and you will too if you try it - pressure cooking cooked chicken for an hour is way too long if you want to eat the chicken meat.)

Also, the 2 phases are how I think about the recipe.

• Phase 1: make batches of broth ahead of time - pressure cook the broth, strain the ingredients, and freeze it in 1-quart containers.
• Phase 2: Make soup. Later, when I want soup for dinner, I thaw out 2 quarts of broth and move on to the soup part of the recipe.

That’s why making broth from the leftover turkey carcass is so useful - I get 6 quarts of broth out of a single turkey, which is good for 3 batches of soup for my family.

If you have a question you’d like answered in a future newsletter, email me. If it’s a good one and useful for other people, I’ll answer it in next month’s newsletter. (I’ll try to answer directly if it is more specific to you.)

What do you think?

If you have any other ideas about this newsletter, please let me know! Questions, comments, and ideas are welcome. (I can’t promise I’ll do anything with them, but I am definitely open to ideas, since this newsletter is so new.)

Thanks again, and see you next month!

Mike Vrobel - ​DadCooksDinner.com​​

June 4, 2026