Don’t forget about the Chicken Rice Soup…
My wife Priscilla is from Singapore and we have not been able to visit her home for far too long, so we have begun traveling via the kitchen. A perfect meal for her is anything with a soup on the side, so I have been really working on my soup game! This recipe evolved from the famous Singaporean Chicken Rice recipe as I started trying all of our favorites in the Instant Pot. For Hainanese Chicken Rice, the soup is just an afterthought and used only as the liquid for the fragrant and rich rice that headlines the dish. We liked how the chicken was cooked in Chicken Rice, but wanted a simpler meal for the weeknight.
To make the soup even more like homemade, Priscilla suggested we add some Jujubes and goji berries, just like her mother would prepare it. These are ingredients that I have never cooked with, so it was all new to me. The result was a beautiful broth that tastes like a rich chicken broth with a hint of sweetness and a unique fragrance that will transport you to Asia. As her mom said, this soup is so simple, why do you even need to write a recipe? Simple and elegant is precisely what makes it is so delicious.
I was a pressure cooker purist and refused to buy an Instant Pot for years… Why buy a complicated device that does the same thing as the tried and true simple pressure cooker? We enjoy soups with almost every dinner at our house, and I thought that if pressure cooking were a little less involved, my life would be a little easier and we might actually be able to enjoy freshly made dishes more often.
I took way too much time researching each of the models, trying to discern what was the real difference between the Instant Pot models like the Duo, Pro, Air Fryer Pro, etc. Not a lot really… The main thing I wanted was a larger (8 Quart) automatic pressure cooker that I did not have to worry so much about. They all generally do this, but I finally decided on the Instant Pot Pro because it has handles to remove the pot from the cooker and it claims to reach pressure faster than the other models.
This recipe almost seems too easy, but give it a go and I promise you will enjoy the richly flavored chicken bone broth and tender lightly herbal chicken meat.
Let’s Cook!
Ingredients
2 lbs chicken pieces with bones and skin (1/2 chicken or assorted pieces)
2 inch piece of ginger, sliced
6 garlic cloves
3 green onions
1/8 cup goji berries
9 jujubes (dried red dates)
4 cups water
Cooking instructions
1.) Slice ginger and green onions and add to Instant Pot. Remove hard skin from garlic cloves, trim root base of clove, and add whole to pot. Add goji berries and jujubes to pot.
2.) Cut up chicken into standard pieces if necessary (leg, thigh, etc.) and add to pot with skin on. If you have chicken backs available, add one to the pot as well.
3.) Add 4 cups of water to pot and gently stir to mix ingredients. Chicken pieces may be slightly out of the water, but not to worry, they will cook down into the soup.
4.) Set Instant Pot to manual pressure cook on high for 16 minutes. Once completed, use the quick-release method to finish.
5.) Use tongs to remove the chicken pieces to a plate. Ladle or pour soup into gravy strainer, catching all of the spices and herbs. Remove the ginger pieces and discard. Distribute the other herbs and solids from the soup to each bowl. Pour soup from gravy strainer into each bowl and discard oil that collects at the top.
6.) Let’s eat!
Optional
Rice noodles or ramen noodles pair well with this soup. Cook noodles separately and add to bowl prior to soup.
Tools
Instant Pot Pro – I am a huge fan of this kitchen gadget… Pressure cooking soups make them so rich and flavorful without a huge time investment.
Soup Strainer – This is the easiest way to get the soup separated from the fat. I like to pour the soup, then add in just a bit of the oil for a rich flavor.
Wusthof Chef’s Knife – My favorite go-to knife for cutting up chicken, spices and vegetables.
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