As if many of the family cookbook recipes weren’t Amy’s favorites already!
Also, Amy’s favorites are apparently soups. Some people get indignant when served soup at a family dinner. As Shawn and Gus would say…
Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana – Instant Pot
There are a lot of copycat recipes for Zuppa Toscana out there. This is not the one we used when we first started making this on the stove years ago. For the instant pot though, we looked for a new one. This one was copied and updated from damndelicious.net. Click here for their page.
For a stovetop version, this is our usual go to recipe from Food Network.
Creamy Tortellini Soup
This one’s not in the Instant Pot, because there isn’t anything that needs to be cooked fast!
Pretty similar to Zuppa Toscana and the Creamy Chicken Gnocchi, but the tomato in the broth makes it different enough to stand alone. The original recipe can be found here.
Creamy Chicken Gnocchi Soup – Instant Pot
Amy likes hearty soups, as do I. The kids – sometimes. Olive Garden has a soup similar to this, but this one’s not really a copycat.
This recipe comes from simplyhappyfoodie.com. You can find their page here.
Amy’s Wendy’s Chili (Less is More Remix)
We’ve done lots of different chili recipes over the years. This one hits on most of the characteristics we like: beans, veggies, mild chili.
If you like a thicker chili, run half a can of the Ranch Style beans through a blender or food processor. I use an immersion blender in the can.
Easy Chicken Tortilla Soup
Amy’s principal made this for the teachers at her school when they had to stay late for a meeting. Everyone wanted the recipe. Not only is this soup yummy, it is quick and stupid-easy to make.
Kerri’s Crawfish Chowder
This is a simple recipe to prepare – put a bunch of stuff in a pot and heat until the cream cheese melts.
Served with hot, buttery garlic bread this will warm your belly. The amount of liquid crab boil determines how spicy it is.
I found a similar recipe online with different proportions of ingredients. For a different take, check out this recipe.
Kerri’s Chicken Enchiladas
These enchiladas are great! The picture I stole uses flour tortillas, although we use mixed corn/flour tortillas.
For a slightly different take and where this picture came from, check out this website.
Easy Beef Enchiladas
When I (Andy) worked as a temp at SourceNet in 2005, my friend Bobby brought these for a potluck. We were all blown away at Bobby’s culinary prowess. He humbly admitted that it was just the recipe on the can of enchilada sauce. They’re good though!
Pinto Beans – Instant Pot
We eat beans and cornbread a lot. Audrey requests this just about every time we menu plan.
For our cornbread we do two Morrison’s Texas Style Honey Sweet kits and add a couple tablespoons of white sugar. That makes 12 muffins.
Leftovers are excellent to make bean dip from, but we rarely have leftovers.
Air Fryer Meatballs
The air fryer is a small countertop forced air convection oven. It cooks fast and well. Amy’s favorite thing to make in the air fryer is hot wings, followed closely by asparagus.
We adapted this recipe from Spend with Pennies here. They have a whole section of air fryer recipes. We tried to make it easier. We are left with a half pound of Italian pork sausage for the freezer.
Air Fryer Hot Wings
These may be the perfect Buffalo wings. Franks RedHot sauce and butter is the classic taste, and these air fried wings are better than my favorite wing place’s texture from fried wings. However, the cooking process is not set it and forget it.
This recipe is from Food Network here. The only change we make is using the biggest air fryer we could find at Sam’s. (PowerXL 8 qt) This is the closest I could find on Amazon. The menu controls are the same. The big capacity helps a lot when cooking for four people. Even so, it takes two batches to cook two pounds of wings.
I also like to switch up the sauces with different wing sauces from H-E-B.
Family Recipe Tree 