Chicken Soup – Part 1 – Bone Broth

It’s winter. Christmas is finished. The house is chilly in the mornings and we are home for a week from school. What’s a great way to warm up the house on a day where the high temperature is only 19 F? Can up some chicken soup!!

It’s an easy two day process, and surprisingly, it isn’t a lot of work. Of course I use my Electric Pressure Cooker, which is one of my favorite tools,  to make it even easier! This makes the best broth I have ever made. My youngest daughter will drink the broth alone, it’s THAT good! (Read 5 Things I Love About My Pressure Cooker)

I start with chicken legs or thighs. Today thighs were priced pretty cheaply, so I picked up a family pack.

I used six thighs for the bone broth and froze the other four to be used in another meal. I tossed the meat in the electric pressure cooker, washed and cut up (cutting in large hunks… you don’t have to dice this up to look pretty because it won’t be eaten, it is purely for flavor) 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery, an a large onion. You can leave the leaves on the celery stalks for even more flavor. SO EASY! Put it all in the pot, add a clove or two of garlic if you like (we do) and 12 cups of water.

 

No seasonings are added, and still, the broth will taste fantastic! I do add salt when using it for soups, but I don’t add it here. I add the salt after the broth had been cooked and cooled. Next, the lid for the pressure cooker gets locked into place, the vent is set to closed, and the timer is set for 60 minutes. That’s it. Now we wait.

After it has come up to pressure and cooked for 60 minutes, I let it come down from pressure naturally. This takes time. I usually make bone broth on a weekend, or a Friday night when I get home from work so that it is finished by the time I’m ready for bed. When I open the lid, it is beautiful! And the smell? Whoa!

I let it cool a bit and then I carefully scoop out the big pieces of chicken (trying to keep them in one piece as much as possible), and I scoop out as much of the carrots, onion, and celery as I can. I set them in a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and store it in the fridge for tomorrow. Next I remove the inner pot of the pressure cooker, cover it with plastic wrap, and  put it into the fridge.

Done. For today. Tomorrow, we make and can the soup.