Fearless Nutrition

What’s the Best Chicken Soup Recipe? | Eater

"Sandi Gaertner’s Instant Pot take uses a whole chicken and skips sautéing vegetables—essentially “dump it all in”—and the pressurized cooking produced unbeatably moist meat that literally “slid off the bone.” Because pressure helped extract collagen and fat, the broth came out visibly enriched and shimmered when I opened the pot. That said, the recipe ultimately took more time than the others once you factor in pressurizing and depressurizing, and the written recipe is annoyingly incomplete: it nowhere specifies what to do with the chicken once the Instant Pot finishes. Practical pitfalls weren’t called out either (it didn’t warn me that slide-off-the-bone tender meat would be hard to pull out of the pot—I solved it by slipping a metal spider under the bird and using tongs, and learned that softened meat makes it easy to snag the skin while shredding). Flavor-wise the broth as written was surprisingly bland compared with the other recipes; the technique yields dreamy texture and a rich mouthfeel, but I’d look for a better-seasoned Instant Pot recipe if my priority is a deeply sippable, restorative broth." - Bettina Makalintal