The recipe that got me here is a familiar one — the Instant Pot Olive Garden copycat everybody’s made at some point: sausage, potatoes, kale, cream, done in under an hour. It’s a good recipe. But every time I made it I found myself wanting more underneath it, something with a little more weight to it before the broth ever goes in.

So I started building the fat first. Duck fat in the bottom of the pot, five strips of bacon rendered down in it until they’re fully cooked, then a tablespoon of olive oil to loosen things up before the sausage goes in by the chunk. I brown it, then break it apart — not the other way around — so the outside gets real color before it ever hits a crumble. Vidalia onion, salt, pepper, oregano, garlic, and a teaspoon of fresh paprika go in after, and that’s the whole base. It didn’t hurt that my neighbor brought me Paprika straight from Hungary, but store bought will do the trick.

Potatoes stay skin-on. Six cups of broth, five minutes at pressure, quick release. Then instead of leaving it on residual heat, I switch the pot to the soup setting and let the kale wilt into it gently while everything else keeps talking to each other. Just a cup of cream goes in at the very end — enough to bring it together, without drowning out the duck fat and bacon underneath it.