Pressure cooker poached chicken

I´ve written before about poached chicken, and I stand by my earlier post. Yes, poached chicken sounds bland and boring, and well, nobody´s saying that it´s a hot ticket or an exotic wild thing. It´s a blank slate of sorts, and nobody will object to having some around the house. And although the method in the other post is perfectly fine, poaching a whole chicken in a pressure cooker makes much more sense.

You know all those tempting dishes they suggest you make with leftover chicken, but you can never make because you only have enough for a stingy sandwich? Well, the answer to that is cook a whole bird to treat as leftovers. A 1.5 kg standard bird stretches very far indeed when portioned out like this, and is a great return on investment.

So, take your pressure cooker and your bird. Salt it well, put it in the pot, cover it with water, and add whatever aromatics you´re in the mood for. I usually use onion, celery carrot and ginger, although bay leaves are more the thing. Whatever. Now lock it , bring it up to pressure and give it 15 minutes.

Note: this is how I used to make it, but now I´m in a so-tender-it-falls-apart kind of chicken place, so I give it 30 minutes for a whole bird and 20 for chicken parts. In any case, if after 15 minutes it´s raw or pink, return it to the pot; raw or undercooked chicken is dangerous and does´t taste good.

Open it, take the chicken out and put it to rest in a bowl (it´s a brothy mess).
Now you have to pick the meat, and it´s hot, so either wait or brave it out.
Once the meat is all in a nice bowl, put the bones back in the pot and give them 15 minutes more. This is of course not strictly necessary but will give you much better stock.

And there you are. A whole lot of chicken meat, a lot of broth, and the possibility to look at all those recipes for pies and sandwiches and pasties and noodles and salads and soups.