Easy Instant Pot Chicken Bone Broth

Try this hands-off method to make rich, nourishing chicken bone broth in an Instant Pot or pressure cooker. This pantry staple is easy to make from scratch and freezes well so you can enjoy homemade broth any time you want.

This homemade version is full of collagen and gelatin and has a luxurious, velvety mouthfeel that’s very different from watery stock.

I make this recipe every other month and freeze it so I always have broth on hand.

Chicken bone broth and my green onion top broth are both perfect pantry staples to make from scratch.

These broths cost almost nothing to make and are incredibly useful for so many recipes.

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Why I Make Bone Broth Each Month

Here’s what I love about making homemade broth:

• Control the quality
• Customize the salt level
• Portion it to your favorite recipes
• Use up chicken and vegetable scraps and save money
• Easy to make a huge or small batch of broth
• No need to buy chicken broth or stock ever again

I grow my own onions every year and save the tops and peels for chicken stock and for onion soup stock. Find out how to grow onions from seed in this post.

And if you’re trying to cook more from scratch, then this recipe is a simple place to start.

Homemade chicken stock is an easy recipe that I’ve been making for years, and I think it’s one of the easiest and most impactful “real food” swaps you can make.

Once November hits, I’m always so grateful to be able to pull out a container of bone broth from the freezer.

I use it for soups all winter long. There’s nothing cozier than a warm bowl of chicken noodle soup, especially made from scratch with dried herbs, carrots, and onions from our garden!

It’s not just for soup, either. I love adding my homemade chicken broth to recipes like my chicken pot pie with an herby sourdough crust.

Ready to start? Let’s make a batch together!

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What You’ll Need

You’ll need a few things to make this Instant Pot chicken bone broth recipe.

• chicken bones: wings, feet, necks, legs, and backs are great; leave some of the meat on
• vegetable scraps (optional): onion and carrot peels, celery leaves, herb stems, mushroom stems, etc.
• pressure cooker or Instant Pot
• fine-mesh colander
• large bowl or extra pot (for straining broth into)
• freezer containers

TIP: If you usually cook boneless chicken or just chicken breasts, try roasting whole chickens or buying bone-in cuts occasionally to start building your freezer stash. You can also ask your butcher for chicken feet as well.

You’ll want all types of chicken bones to be able to create a rich, gelatinous broth. The kind that gels when it cools. It’s the best!

Herbs are also good to add, especially if you’ve got just a few random sprigs languishing in the fridge. If you don’t want to add them to the broth, though, you can also dry them! See how I dry fresh herbs in this post.

How to Make Almost Instant Chicken Broth

This recipe is super simple and easy to make in the pressure cooker. Here are the basic steps:

1. Fill pressure cooker with chicken bones.
2. Cover bones with water.
3. Pressure cook on high for 2 hours.
4. Strain, let cool, and freeze.

Easy, right? Let’s go through the nuances of each step together.

Step 1: Fill Pressure Cooker

Save chicken bones in a gallon bag in the freezer. Once it’s full put them all in the inner pot of your Instant Pot.

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I have over 3 pounds of chicken bones straight from the freezer here. (Not the most glamorous picture… I know!)

If I have vegetable scraps (typically onion, carrot, celery, herb stems, and mushroom stems), then I’ll add them in with bones.

Try to pack as much in there as you can without going past the top of the Instant Pot. The more bones you have, the better the broth will be.

Step 2: Cover With Water

Fill the pot with water up to the maximum fill line.

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Step 3: Pressure Cook

Set the Instant Pot to high pressure and pressure cook for 2 hours. If using a different brand of pressure cooker, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for pressure cooking.

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Allow the pressure cooker to naturally release pressure. Don’t quick-release it.

Step 4: Strain, Cool, and Freeze

Let the broth cool slightly, then strain out the solids through a fine mesh colander into a glass bowl or stainless steel pot.

Allow broth to completely cool, then portion out the broth into your freezer containers. Freeze or use right away.

My freezer containers are repurposed large feta cheese containers.

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Often, I’ll use part of the broth to make a soup for dinner that same night and freeze the remainder.

Alternate Cooking Methods

If you don’t have a pressure cooker or Instant Pot:

Use a Slow Cooker
If using a slow cooker, slow cook the broth for 24 hours with the lid partially off.

Simmer on the Stove
On the stovetop, use a large stockpot to boil the bones and water for 12 hours. Skim any impurities or foam that rises to the top.

Whichever method you use, don’t stir the liquid while it cooks. Just let it do its thing. Stirring can cloud the broth.

Additional Tips for Freezing Chicken Bone Broth

• Let broth cool completely before portioning into freezer containers. If you’re spill-prone (like I am), set your containers in the kitchen sink and pour the broth in. Spills will be a breeze to clean up.
• Leave 2 inches of space between your broth and the top of the freezer container. Liquid expands when it freezes and could pop the lid off or break the container if it doesn’t have enough room at the top. I haven’t mastered the art of freezing in glass, so this is why I prefer to use plastic containers to freeze liquids in.
• For smaller portions, use an ice cube tray or Souper Cubes to freeze broth in. Transfer to a freezer bag or other container and store in the freezer. You’ll easily be able to take out tablespoons or single cups of broth at a time for whatever recipe you need it for.

Make Broth Part of Your Routine

If you feel like you’ll never be able to save enough chicken bones or vegetable to make a batch of broth, I get it! I wasn’t able to get the hang of making homemade stock regularly until I did these things:

• Add chicken bones to a freezer bag after every roast chicken dinner.
• Roast whole chickens more often to get a wider variety of bones for broth.
• Save veggie scraps in a separate bag to use for stock later.
• Clean and reuse large yogurt or sour cream containers for freezing broth.
• Save beef or pork bones to add to your broth. You don’t have to make broth exclusively with chicken bones.

Once you build the habit, making broth becomes second nature. It’ll be so easy to pop a freezer bag of scraps in the pressure cooker and turn them into nutritious broth in just a few hours.

And it’ll feel so good to use up scraps that otherwise would’ve gone in the trash.

Using what you grow is also a learning curve! See my tips for using up garden harvests in the kitchen in this post if you’re curious.

More Cooking-From-Scratch Recipes

• Chicken Pot Pie with Herby Sourdough Crust
• Sourdough Bread Stuffing with Squash and Herbs
• Quick Pickled Onions
• How to Roast a Pumpkin and Make Pumpkin Puree
• How to Make Butter from Heavy Cream