At Green Eggs & Sam Farm, Sam takes pride in offering premium pasture-raised chickens that are not only ethically raised but also bursting with flavor. The whole pasture-raised chicken is truly our most versatile product and one that our farm family eats a LOT of!
Before Sam started the farm in 2020, we did what most Americans do and we bought our chicken from the grocery store. We never bought a whole chicken unless it was already cooked rotisserie-style for us. We bought boneless, skinless breast and thighs and that was about it. When a recipe called for chicken broth, we got that from the store in cartons, too. I remember pouring it out of the cartons thinking it looked so pale and surely added little flavor.
When Sam started processing chickens, it was intimidating to figure out how to cook them, but I was determined. We had a little trial and error, but now, we cook several chickens a week and absolutely LOVE the versatility and health benefits of this amazing chicken and broth!
We’ve done a few different things, oven roasting, and beer-can chicken on the grill among them, but our absolute favorite, go-to, easy, no-hassle, unprepared-mom, busy-day way to prepare a whole chicken is in the Instant Pot (or other pressure cooker).
I’m happy to cook dinner for my family, I really am. I enjoy it, truly, I just have a really hard time planning ahead consistently…and it never ceases to amaze me just how often dinner comes around! Can anyone relate?!?! So, I’m all about EASY ways to make delicious, nutritious food for my family! And an instant pot whole chicken fits the bill!!
So, to make this magic, procrastinator-enabling fall-off-the-bone tender chicken happen, simply remove your Green Eggs & Sam Farm whole chicken from the freezer, cut off the plastic wrapping, place it in your instant pot on top of the rack, add water up to the bottom of the rack, pour a little oil on top of the chicken and any spices that you’d like, close the lid, set on high pressure for about 50 minutes and walk away! That’s IT!! Can you believe it’s that easy?!?! Believe it…it’s TRUE!!
When the time on the instant pot is done, you can let it release pressure for awhile on it’s own, or, if you’re in a hurry, you can release the pressure manually, take the lid off and dive right in.
We use this way of cooking the chicken mostly for using the chicken in chicken pie, chicken tacos, chicken salad, stir fry, white chicken chili, etc, etc…anything we used to buy boneless/tasteless chicken from the store for. We also have been known to just open the instant pot and eat it all while we debone it…to each his own.
There are a plethora of other recipes and ways to cook a whole chicken…with or without an instant pot, so have fun experimenting!
On the next post, I’ll talk about bone broth! DON’T throw out that chicken carcass!!! You can get a gallon or more of the most amazing, tasty, and nutritious broth from it!! Stay tuned!