Chicken stock and soup (pressure cooker) #1

I decided to try something new and make chicken stock and soup in my new pressure cooker instead of on the stove. The flavor is great but the amounts were a little off on my first attempt. I wouldn't recommend making this exact recipe, but I wrote it down so I know what to adjust next time. By the way, my regular recipe on the stove is here .

I started with a whole natural (no antibiotic, no hormone) chicken.

I broke it down into parts. I used the breast and one drumstick and thigh elsewhere. That left the carcass, wings, one leg and drumstick, and some breast trimmings for my soup.

Roasted everything for 30 minutes at 400°F. Here is everything about to go into the oven.

Here's what I put into the pot:

roasted chicken parts 1/2 yellow onion 1 carrot 1 stalk celery 1 clove garlic 1 bay leaf 1/4 tsp. whole black peppercorns 1/2 tsp. salt 6 cups (48 oz). water

It's probably best to leave the vegetables in large pieces so they don't break down into mush in the pressure cooker.

Here's everything before the water:

Ready to cook!

I used the soup setting on the Instant Pot, which defaults to 30 minutes and high pressure. Because this was the first time I had used it, I set it to 45 minutes thinking 30 minutes wasn't long enough. But the Instant Pot counts only from some time after everything is boiling away, so probably 30 minutes is fine, total cooking time should be about an hour.

After the cooking cycle I let it cool down naturally and the pressure drop, about 15 minutes.

Then put the pot into a sink with cold water to cool it down enough to be able to handle the chicken.

I lost way more water to steam/evaporation than I expected. I only had 12 oz. of stock left! But it was very flavorful so I added water to make 16 oz.. I could probably have diluted it even more. Put it into the refrigerator so the fat floats to the top and is easily skimmed off.

Update 12/17/2014: This was clearly user error on my part. I must not positioned the pressure relief valve correctly. When I made stock again it stayed nicely pressurized and I didn't lose any liquid at all, which is how I thought it was supposed to work. I added 64 oz. of water to account for evaporation, of which there was none, so the stock was a little more diluted but it was still good.

Picking through the chicken, I found 3.5 oz. of nice bits for the soup. The chicken looks much better than simmering on the stove for 3 hours - the flavor was clearly extracted but everything was still intact.

Update 12/17/2014: Doing the picking on a sheet pan makes it much easier! I also used a larger 5.94 pound chicken and got 9.7 oz. meat, even though I only used the carcass and wings, no breast or thigh.

And that's it. It's kind of a lot of work for one bowl of soup, I'll have to play around with the amounts. And when I make it for real, I normally use two chicken carcasses, so there would at least be double this amount, and I can probably extend it farther than that.

Update 12/17/2014:Properly setting the pressure cooker, using 64 oz. of water, and a larger chicken I got a more reasonable 4 servings. I think 48 oz. of water and 3 servings for 1 chicken is probably the best, but the soup was pretty flavorful even stretched to 4 servings.