The weather is chilly and rainy so it's time for some butternut squash stew. This thing is hearty. It is full of protein. I've got some garbanzo beans in there, lentils and of course some stew meat. And this recipe is going to be cooked in the instant pot. Lots of flavors going on here guys. You're going to love it. I'm Ronkin Robin and I'm going to show you how to make it right after my chef joke. Okay, let's start off here with chef joke number one. The man goes into a restaurant and orders a bowl of soup. The waiter brings it over, he takes a taste and says, hey, this tastes funny. And the waiter says, well, why aren't you laughing? So the first thing we're going to start off with is our butternut squash. Now you can either buy it like I've got here or you have to prep it up or you can buy it already cut up. We're just going to save you some time. So to cut up a butternut squash you're going to want to cut off the end so you have a nice flat surface and things don't roll around so much. I'm going to cut off the neck part of this because there's no seeds in that part. Then I'll cut off the other end. And now you'll just trim off the skin. You just slice it down very thin with your knife. Then I'm going to cut it into bite-sized chunks. Rotate your stack and then cut into bite-sized pieces. So when you cut the part that has the seeds in there, you're going to want to still peel it like we did and it's a little bit harder because it's a little more curvy. So basically just take your knife and just follow along the curves. Once you're done trimming, just turn the piece over and cut it in half and then half again. Now you can just grab a spoon and scoop out the seeds. And then you can cut that into bite-sized pieces. We're also going to chop up one zucchini into bite-sized pieces. Next we're going to prep up a yellow onion into the super-fine dice. I like to make some horizontal cuts first and then some vertical cuts after that. And then just give it a nice slice and you can see the pieces come out nice and small. Now we're going to start cooking our onion. I have a large frying pan here over a medium-high heat and I'm dropping in some olive oil. Then we'll place our onions right in the pan and we'll saute these for about five minutes. While I'm waiting for the onions, I'm going to prep up some garlic. Take some fresh garlic, cut off the end and give it the old smash like you might do the like button if you're enjoying this video. The skin should come off nice and easy. I'm going to place my garlic into a garlic press and then we're going to squeeze it into our onions. And stir in the garlic for about one minute. Now we're going to place the onion and garlic right into the instant pot. Now let's talk about our meat now. I have stew meat here. I splurged. I bought 100% grass-fed and it's pretty amazing stuff. Now you can see here the chunks are quite big and I like to cut these into bite-sized pieces that way we get a little bit in every bite, right? I mean I just some people could just scoop up all the meat and that's it, right? We're not going to let that happen. Take a piece like this, I'll cut it in half. Sometimes I'll cut it into thirds or in this case and I'll trim off a little bit of that fat. I mean that piece is okay but I'm going to cut that one down too. So you're going to see me go through this and get lots of nice pieces out of it. You know each piece I'm going to get at least four. So this is what it looks like after I trimmed it all up. You know that frying pan we used for the onions? Well now we're going to use it for the meat. I got it over a medium-high heat. I want this hot because we're just searing the meat. Pour in a little bit of olive oil and let it get hot. Go ahead and swirl the oil in the pan and then toss in that stew meat. Make sure to spread out all the pieces on the bottom of the pan so each one is touching the bottom of the pan so we can sear up. And then don't touch it for like two or three minutes. Add a bit of salt while you're waiting. After about two minutes flip all the pieces over. And then let it cook again for another couple minutes. Now it's time to toss that meat into the instant pot. I'm using chicken stock in this but you can certainly use beef stock if you have it. I'm going to start off by using a couple of cups and we'll adjust as we go. We're going to add some spices to this. First up is my oregano which I got it sprouts by the way. It's a good deal. It's organic. I have my own Italian spice blend that I'd like you to try out. I'll leave a link in the description for you to that video. But yeah it's just a combination of different spices so I'm going to put some of that in. And then we'll add a little bit of dried basil. Now of course we're going to have to add a little salt so it's going to be somewhere between a half and a teaspoon. We're going to place the sweet potatoes in there and the crushed tomato. Next goes some lentils. Now these are green and I like the green because they're firm and what they also do is provide some protein to this dish and they thicken it up. And we're not using too many. Just about a half a cup maybe a little less. Now some right in there. Next goes a little Worcestershire sauce for a little bit of extra flavor. Now for more protein and fiber we're adding some chickpeas or gobbanzo beans. Then we're going to go ahead and cook this on high heat for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes do a quick release and then we'll add the zucchini because we don't want that to get too mushy. We'll cook this again on high for 15 minutes. After another 15 minutes a cooking do a quick release and here we go. This is our stew. If only you could smell my kitchen right now. This thing is so delicious. It's hearty. It's flavorful. Look at those garbanzo beans and the zucchini and of course the butternets squash and that beef and the flavors and the spices. It all brings it together and it is delicious. This is the stew to try for these cold wintery months. And it's nice to season this up with a little bit of fresh chopped parsley. Hey let me know in the comments if you're going to try this stew. I sure hope you do. If you're looking for more soups look no further than my homemade chicken soup here. This is packed with nutrition and it's delicious. Click the link on the screen and it'll take you right to the recipe. Hey I hope you enjoyed today's video. If you did smash that like button and share the video with someone you think might enjoy a delicious hearty stew. Alright we'll see you back here next week for another rock and recipe. Cheers!