Making Chicken In Your Instant Pot? Avoid This Mistake

The Instant Pot may truly be the product of the decade. Safer than its pressure-cooking predecessors, this handy gadget can help you whip up a delicious Instant Pot dinner in a flash — even if you forgot to defrost the meat — and meal prep like a boss, even if time is limited. But if you're cooking up chicken and tossing the liquid you cooked it in, you're making a major mistake with your Instant Pot. 

That's not just any liquid, it's precious instant pot chicken stock, and you can use it to make even more delicious custom meals, with less food waste. Inside this flavor-packed liquid gold lurks the vitamins and minerals you cooked out of that chicken, and you can use it in soups, stews, and sauces to boost the depth of flavor of your meals for the rest of the week and beyond. So don't make the mistake of throwing out this home-cooking hero.

DIY chicken stock isn't always worth it if you have to buy expensive ingredients and spend hours checking a hot stove. But saving the liquid from the chicken you're already cooking is a totally different story. It's also economical since it saves you from buying those expensive boxes of pre-made stock at the grocery store. Plus, you can save the cooking liquid from literally any chicken recipe, whether you're using a whole bird or pieces. Just know that the flavor profile of your dish will impact the flavor of your finished stock.

The Instant Pot is lightning fast and doesn't heat up your kitchen. With traditional stock-making methods, you could be developing flavor (read: heating up your kitchen) for 10 hours or more. With an Instant Pot, you can have succulent homemade stock in as little as 30 minutes with little difference in flavor. The pressure cooker is literally forcing out the flavor in less time than if there were no pressure.

It's also customizable. If you need to reduce your sodium or avoid an allergen, you have total control over what you put in it — and what you don't. Plus, depending on how you cooked your chicken, it may have collagen you won't find in most boxes. And collagen is chock-full of bone-strengthening minerals, vitamins, and amino acids.

The United States Department of Agriculture advises you can store your chicken stock in the fridge for up to four days or in the freezer for two or three months. If you're storing it in your fridge, a jar or deli container is convenient. But if you're going to freeze it, use ice cube trays or flat-pack it in single-use amounts to maximize your freezer space and decrease the amount of time it takes to defrost on a busy weeknight. 

Now, you just need to find some quick weeknight recipes you can use it in. For example, defrost a couple of flat packs to make ramen or chicken noodle soup in half an hour. Or add flavor to your rice or couscous by cooking it in leftover stock. The same applies to cooking veggies and pasta, or potatoes destined for a mash — boil them in stock for added flavor. 

And once you have the ice cubes, you won't know how you lived without them. Toss a couple into your pan after cooking meat or poultry to deglaze and make a quick pan sauce. You can even use them to cool down too-hot soups or potpies without watering down the flavor, or place them atop leftover rice or chicken while you reheat it in the microwave.