Cooking an entire chicken in the Instant Pot is easy and will provide you will the freshest and juiciest chicken. I used to buy pre-roasted ones from various markets. And while that's an option for when I'm short on time, those chickens tend to not be very fresh and they're often rather dry. No thanks. If you still don't have an Instant Pot, you're missing out. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to make a whole chicken in the instant pot. And when you're all done with the chicken, you can also make Instant Pot chicken bone broth to save a bunch of money. I'll share a chicken bone broth recipe one day. But for today, you just get a whole roast chicken flavored with a bit of thyme, lemon, garlic, and butter.
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (they're usually around 4 lbs.)
8 oz. chicken broth
1 lemon
2 cloves garlic
4 tbsp melted butter
¼ cup fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Unwrap your chicken and pat dry. Remove the giblets (you'll usually find them in a bag inside the chicken cavity).
Slice the lemon and juice it. Add the lemon juice to the butter and place the juiced lemon halves inside the chicken's cavity.
Smash two cloves of garlic and put them inside the cavity with the lemon halves.
Put the thyme leaves, salt and pepper into the lemon butter mixture. Mix well.
Pour the chicken broth inside the Instant Pot and place the metal insert with the handles inside.
Cut some slits into the chicken's skin and then place it on top of the metal rack in the Instant Pot.
Pour the melted butter mixture over the chicken and make sure that some of it gets into the slits you made in the skin.
Cook the chicken on manual pressure for 6 minutes per pound. For example, if your chicken is 4 lbs, you'll set the pressure timer for 24 minutes.
Once the timer goes off, let the chicken sit in the Instant Pot for 12 minutes before releasing the pressure valve
If you want browned or extra crispy skin, you can place the chicken under your oven's broiler for 5-10 minutes once you remove it from the Instant Pot.