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Welcome! You’re here to find out how to make the best Instant Pot bone broth. Clearly, you typed that request into Google or Pinterest and it brought you here.
Luckily, I can show you how. Bone Broth is one of the fundamentals of my cooking. It’s a super easy and super nourishing, well, super food (for want of a better phrase) that ticks many boxes for me.
Such as, ease? Tick. Nourishing and healthy? Double tick. Budget-friendly and the enemy of food waste? Oh my goodness. TICK and TICK.
What’s so good about Bone Broth?
It’s just delicious. That’s a promising start. Bone broth is also fantastically good for our bodies – chock full of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and collagen. It’s easy to digest so your body can easily absorb all this goodness.
As a result, the benefits of bone broth are many. For example, it’s associated with healing leaky guts and soothing immune systems assailed by colds, ‘flu and general malaise.
You can also find various permutations of bone broth around the world, using techniques that are thousands of years old. This is a very traditional foodstuff and clearly, all those cooks, grandmas and mamas who ruled the kitchen were on to something.
I remember a pregnant American lady whose mother hailed from China. Just before the arrival of the baby, the Chinese mama prepared a storm of soups and broths using everything from pig trotters to chicken feet. These nourishing concoctions were then fed to the postpartum mummy as she rested and recovered with her new baby. Just wonderful!
On a budgetary note, making bone broths is also a good use of the chicken carcasses from your Sunday roast as well as the bones from the butcher that would otherwise go to waste. This is such a sensible and healthy way to extend your food budget as well as feed your family well.
Oh, and as you’ll see… bone broth is usefully gluten- and dairy-free!
The Ingredients for Bone Broth
You can find the full recipe card for bone broth below, but essentially it’s cobbled together with some cheap and abundant ingredients. Such as carrots, celery, onions and parsley for your vegetable elements. You’ll also need salt, peppercorns and a bay leaf. Finally, BONES. Beef, lamb and chicken are all great and I will sometimes use pigs trotters and knuckles as well.
Cooking Bone Broth
I tend to go to the butcher once a month and gather up a few kilos of those bones. I’ll then freeze them in 1.5kg packs along with all the other ingredients. It means when I’m ready to make broth, it’s a matter of moments to take the Bone Broth Bag (awful name but wonderfully alliterative and you won’t forget that phrase in a hurry!), tip its contents into the Instant Pot, add water and away you go.
TIP: Rinse out the freezer bag with a little bit of water so you get all the salt out and pour into your pot.
You can also use a slow cooker or just a large cooking pot on the stove top. These will take longer, with the Instant Pot at about 6 hours from switching on to cooking to the pressure valve releasing, whilst the slow cooker is around 12 hours and the stove top version is about 24 hours.
Once the broth is finished, strain the veg and bones from the broth with a colander and put it into jars or tupperware. The broth will go quite gelatinous and wibbly if you’ve used beef and lamb bones, pigs trotters or chicken feet in your broth. Broth from chicken carcasses is more like a stock or bouillon so doesn’t go wibbly but is just as delicious.
What else can i use bone broth for?
Oh golly. There are many uses. You can enjoy a cup of the stuff on its own. I might add a dash of tamari and sesame oil to jazz things up.
It’s also the basis of my soups and makes them ever so hearty and delicious.
Feel free to smuggle it into recipes such as bolognaise sauce, stews and as the basis for curries and sauces. Really, bone broth is just so jolly useful I can’t praise it enough.
Aren’t you lucky that I’ve also made a little video showing how I cobble together my version of bone broth?
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you overcook bone broth in a pressure cooker?
No. Not in the Instant Pot as the limit on the Soup / Broth setting (the highest and longest setting you can get) is for 4 hours.
Is it better to cook bone broth in a slow cooker or Instant Pot?
In terms of flavour, I’ve never noticed a difference between the broth from a slow cooker and an Instant pot. However, I personally prefer the Instant Pot as it’s quicker. As an extra bonus, it’s more energy efficient and thus cheaper to run. Anything that helps the budget and saves the planet these days is brilliant.
What are the best bones for bone broth?
Lots. Like knuckles, feet (chicken and trotters), joints, marrow bones, oxtails, chicken carcasses and lamb bones.
Easy Instant Pot Bone Broth
Here's my recipe for making a super simple, rich and tasty bone broth in the Instant Pot. This liquid gold is fantastically good for your gut and will give you the best foundation for soups, stews and sauces. Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 1 Stick of Celery
- 1 Carrot
- 1 Onion
- 14 Peppercorns
- 1 Bay leaf
- 1 Handful of Parsley
- 3-4 tbsp Salt (add more or less to taste as you get more familiar with making bone broth)
- 750g-1kg of Chicken Carcasses, Lamb Bones or Beef Bones (especially marrow bones for the latter)
- 3 ish Litres of Water or enough to submerge all the ingredients
Instructions
hour 1. Cut your onion, carrot (unpeeled but washed) and celery sticks in half. Add these to the Instant Pot. You can also throw in any onion skins or carrot peelings you have floating around.
2. Add the bayleaf, salt, parsley, peppercorns and bones to the pot. Then submerge in water up to the max limit on the side of the metal pot. If you're doing this in a regular stove pot or in a slow cooker then submerge the bones under 1cm of water.
3. Switch the Instant Pot onto to the max Soup / Broth setting. That is four hours. It'll take about an hour to get up to full heat and pressure before the four hours officially starts and then another hour at the end of cooking for the pressure to subside enough to take the lid off. Hence 6 hours cook time in total.
4. Once finished, strain the veg and bones from the broth by using a colander and some large bowls.
5. You can now keep the broth in the fridge in a clean preserving jar or plastic container for up to a week. Otherwise freeze it for up to 3 months or just use it straight away. Delicious!
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