Pressure Cooker Whole Chicken

Pressure cooker whole chicken for the electric pressure cooker or Instant Pot.

I had two whole chickens in the freezer waiting to be cooked, so I wanted to try to make them into meat and bones for soup.

But instead of roasting the birds, I decided to make pressure cooker whole chicken!

I cooked one whole chicken from frozen in the electric pressure cooker, and did the same with the other chicken, but thawed.

The result? Amazingly tender and perfectly cooked throughout. And it fell right apart with very little effort so the bones were easy to pick apart and reserve for homemade bone broth. Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS

Whole raw chicken
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon ground rosemary
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

DIRECTIONS

Combine the dry ingredients into a small bowl and whisk together well.

Pour 1 cup of water into the pressure cooker, and place the rack or trivet into the bottom of the pressure cooker.

Remove the chicken from the packaging and lightly rub the dry ingredient mix all over the bottom of the chicken. Then turn it over and repeat on the breast side. In the pictures I have here, I mixed them with a little olive oil (NON-extra virgin) and brushed it on with a silicone brush. I don’t recommend that, because the oil keeps the skin too soft.

Place rubbed/brushed chicken onto the trivet or rack of your pressure cooker, breast-side up.

Place the lid on the pressure cooker and ensure the vent is set to sealed/closed, to ensure the pressure is naturally released.

Use the manual cook or HIGH setting (not low setting).

Set the pressure cooker to cook for 10 minutes cook time per lb of chicken. So for a 5 pound bird, it will be 50 minutes manual cook.  If your chicken is thawed, you can use the rule of 6 minutes per pound, so a 5 pound thawed bird would be 30 minutes manual cook.

Once the cooker has finished releasing the pressure on its own, unlock and lift the lid and check to see the internal temp of 165 F (measure with an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the chicken not close to any bone, like breast or thigh).

If the chicken’s done, remove the bird from the cooker. If the bird is under-cooked/not up to temperature yet, simply place the lid back on and add 5-6 more minutes on manual cook/manual release.

The pot should still be hot, so it won’t take nearly as long to build up the heat/pressure, as the first time.

After your pressure cooker whole chicken is finished, there will be some lovely broth in the bottom of the pot, with which you can use to make sauce, gravy, or soup.

At this point, you can serve the pressure cooker whole chicken after letting it rest a bit.

To crisp up the skin of your pressure cooker whole chicken (optional):

Place onto a foil-lined pan and cook under the broiler 4-8 minutes on each side, if desired.

Notes:

Cook time:

If you are unfamiliar with how electric pressure cookers work,  it’s not much different than with stove top cookers in that there is initial time needed to build pressure inside the cooker, before it actually starts to cook the food.

Example: For an average whole chicken, it would take between 12-16 minutes to build up the initial pressure. So for a 5-lb bird, even tough the cook time is 30 minutes, consider adding up to 20 minutes to the total time before it will be done. This is handy to know if scheduling your meal to happen at a certain time of the day.

Tips for best results before freezing your store-bought chicken:

Once you bring it home, check the lower and neck cavities to make sure there aren’t any extra parts inside (heart, gizzard)! Just remove the giblets and/or neck from those areas and throw them out or reserve them for some other purpose (I use them for gravy). Also throw away any moisture-absorbing pads, string, plastic ties, etc. before cooking.

If you discover that you have accidentally cooked your chicken with the giblets or neck inside the cavity of the bird, it’s still fine to eat. I would be concerned though, if you cooked the bird with the absorbing pad on it, those contain materials that may not be safe to eat.

The spice mixture brushed all over the chicken (I recommend rubbing it on instead of using oil and a brush!)

Place the chicken into the cooker

Cover pot with lid and secure it. Ensure the vent is set to sealed/closed, to allow the pressure to naturally release (NOT manual or quick release!).

Press the manual COOK or HIGH setting (not low setting) button and set the pressure cooker to cook for 10 minutes cook time per lb of chicken.

In this case, I had a 3.33 lb bird, so I set the cook time to 20 minutes (not including pressure build-up wait time)

The animation of the characters on the readout means it’s building up the pressure, and to wait.