Hearty 30 minute Chicken Soup: The Instant Pot Chronicles

Hearty, easy chicken soup can be conjured up in 30 minutes with the Instant Pot. On the stove-top, this sort of soup would normally take 3-4 hours. (By the way, thanks 'Anonymous' for your request and keep 'em coming!)

Hearty chicken soup mmm mmm yum

This is my basic recipe for chicken soup and I make it at least once a month. I make a big pot and eat it all week. I love chicken soup! It's a great cold remedy and anytime-pick-me-up. It is low-carber friendly too.

Ingredients
(for about 5 quarts of soup)

1 small whole chicken (4-5 lbs)

1 whole bulb of garlic

2 stalks celery

2 carrots

1 bunch parsley (about 5 stalks)

1 thumb-sized knob of ginger

2 tablespoons salt

6 cups water 

Directions

1. Place the chicken in the Instant Pot.
2. Cut the carrots and celery diagonally into large pieces. Cut the parsley into 2 inch long sections, stems and all.  Cut the ginger into thick slices. Separate the garlic bulb into cloves and peel the skins off each clove. 
3. Add all the vegetables into the Instant Pot. 
4. Add the salt and the water. 
5. Place the lid on the Instant Pot, set the pressure valve to 'seal' and select 'Poultry', which will give 15 minutes of pressure cooking. (It will take about 15 minutes for the liquid inside to come to a boil and build up pressure, then it will pressure cook for 15 minutes. Total cook time 30 minutes).
6. After the Instant Pot has worked it magic on the ingredients you placed inside it, fish the chicken out and set it on a large plate to cool a bit. Then pull all the meat off the bones. Return the meat to the soup as large chunks, or after chopping into smaller pieces, depending on what you prefer). 
7. Serve warm. Happy eating!

Optional Ingredients

To this basic chicken soup recipe, you can add pretty much anything you like to jazz it up. I add serano or jalapeno peppers for some extra heat. Or ginseng root as a real pick-me-up.

Anticlockwise L-R: Parsley, carrot, celery, garlic, ginseng root, ginger root, chicken.

What's your favorite chicken soup recipe? Would love to hear from you!

Next up in the Instant Pot Chronicles - Herbal Chicken Soup that will cure almost anything, even a broken heart. :)

Instant Pot Baby Back Ribs: Easy and Yum!

Rib Lovers Unite! Here's a recipe that's super easy, takes only 30 minutes pressure cooking with my Multi-Function Instant Pot, and will hit that spot without hard-hitting your wallet. That's right, you read me right. Thirty minute pressure cooked ribs. (Read my review of the Instant Pot HERE).

I've made it twice using the Instant Pot so far and both times it produced fall-off-the-bone tender and tasty ribs that the entire family LOVED. Made from scratch with no additives, MSG, preservatives, or high fructose corn syrup, these ribs are actually, healthy. Recipe adapted for the Instant Pot from Scott Hibb's famous rib recipe , minus the onion and whiskey. I'm actually salivating as I plug away at this blog post!

Sorry blur iPhone pic taken with rib-sticky fingers
- I nearly forgot to even take this one pic!

Ingredients
(for 6 large half racks of baby backs, feeding 6)
Three 2 lb slabs of baby back ribs (7 lbs or about 3 kg total)
3 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon fine ground cayenne powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder (Love Frontier's organic one)
1/2 cup tomato paste
1 cup apple cider vinegar (I like Bragg's)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon molasses
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon liquid smoke flavoring
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/8 cup water
*The fresh ribs are about $25 from Restaurant Depot. The finished ribs cost about $150 in a restaurant. 

Directions

1. Prep the ribs by removing the membrane that covers the inner part of the ribs. This allows the flavor and seasonings to penetrate the meat. (See a video tutorial HERE).
2. Lay the ribs out on a large tray. You'll season one side first, then the other side. On one side, sprinkle on half the salt, cayenne powder, black pepper, garlic powder. Repeat with the rest of these seasonings on the other side.
3. In a small bowl, mix the tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, molasses, honey and liquid smoke. Pour this sauce over the ribs. Turn over to coat the other side.
4. Arrange the ribs in the Instant Pot, meaty part facing outward and sort of nestled circular-like (see pic). Pour the sauce from the tray into the Pot. 



Seasoned ribs in the Instant Pot ready to go

5. Place the lid on the Pot, set the pressure valve to 'seal' and select 'Stew', which will give 30 minutes of pressure cooking. It will take 15-20 minutes for the liquid inside to come to a boil and build up pressure, then it will pressure cook for 30 minutes. So total cook time including prep is about an hour.
6. When the time is up, pull out the ribs and arrange on a tray. 
7. Preheat the oven to grill on 'Low'.
8. Reduce the liquid left in the pot to a basting sauce by heating it on high in a saucepan for 5-10 minutes. Stir the cornstarch with the 1/8 cup of water, then add that to the reduced sauce to thicken it. Stir vigorously while adding the cornstarch solution. At this point, taste and adjust salt and sugar as you prefer.
9. Baste the ribs generously with the basting sauce. Place the basted ribs in the oven for 5 minutes for a beautiful char-grilled finish.
10. Enjoy!

Do you have a favorite no-fail rib recipe to share? I welcome you to try mine and let me know how it turned out for you!

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

Review of Instant Pot 6-in-1 Pressure Cooker 6.33 qt

I was about to buy myself a new stainless steel rice cooker when I came across the Instant Pot® IP-LUX60 6-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cooker, 6.33qt, Latest 3rd Generation Technology, Stainless Steel Cooking Pot and Exterior (wow that's a mouthful) in stainless steel and got that instead. It turned out to one of the best buys I've made in a while!

Perfect fluffy grains of rice from the Instant Pot

What I look for in a rice cooker

• Stainless steel. NO aluminum.
• Large capacity - at least 25 cups cooked rice (the Pot is 6.33 quarts or about 25 cups, thusly 10 cups raw rice)
• Perfect cooked rice 
• Keep warm function that won't result in 'crusty bottomed rice'

Instant Pot Magic
The Instant Pot does all the above, and more. It also functions as a pressure cooker and steamer. You can even tell it to have dinner ready by say 7 pm, and it will magically produce a dish that makes you seem to have slaved over all day. (just a small exaggeration). But yes, you can throw all ingredients into the pot in the morning before going off to work, and program it to have your chilli, stew, casserole etc ready for dinner and it will automatically do it for you. 

So Far So Awesome
So far the Pot has conjured up chicken-falling-off-the-bone soup in 15 minutes, unbelievably tender and succulent baby back ribs in 30 minutes, and delicious fluffy rice in about 10 minutes.

Ribs in 30 minutes? For Real?
The '30 minutes' really means cook time under pressure, after the Pot has built up sufficient pressure to go into Super Pressure Cook Mode. So the actual total cook time would be the time it takes to heat up to Pressure + number of minutes in Super Pressure Cook Mode. For the baby back ribs, it was an amazing 40 minutes total. Ain't that something? None of my guests believed me, though that didn't stop them from devouring every tender tasty rib. Heck I wouldn't have believed me either, if I hadn't set the Pot timer myself!

Gracie's Verdict
The Instant Pot has met all my 'must-a-haves' in a rice cooker, with the bonus of an incredibly time- and energy-saving pressure cooker, in an easy-to-use design. I'll be sure to update if I find something I don't like about it, but right now I'm in the Honeymoon Phase! *love*

Would love to hear your experiences using the Instant Pot - Like, Love or Blech? :) Leave a comment!

xo Gracie