Instant Pot Chicken Bone Broth: Rich Homemade Recipe

This Instant Pot chicken bone broth is quick to make and yields a gelatinous, nutritious stock perfect for soups, sauces, and everyday cooking.

Homemade chicken bone broth requires just a few simple ingredients: poultry bones, optional chicken feet for extra collagen, some vegetable scraps or whole vegetables, fresh herbs, and seasoning. Though broth-making is an ancient tradition that historically used long, slow simmering, a pressure cooker like the Instant Pot reduces the time considerably while still producing a richly nourishing result.

Whether you follow paleo, Whole30, GAPS, or simply want to support gut health and reduce food waste, making bone broth at home is a small, high-impact habit to add to your routine.

Why you’ll love this recipe

• Nutrient dense: Adding chicken feet boosts collagen, creating a rich, gelled broth when chilled.
• Mild, versatile flavor: Chicken broth is flavorful yet gentle, making it an ideal base for many recipes.
• Faster with the Instant Pot: You can condense traditional long-simmer times into roughly 90–120 minutes.
• Easy: The Instant Pot simplifies the process and requires minimal hands-on time.
• Zero food waste: Use leftover carcasses, raw backs, or veggie trimmings to make an economical, nourishing batch.

Good to know: Building broth-making into your weekly routine is an efficient way to use scraps and add nutrition to meals.

Ingredients

This straightforward method does not require roasting the bones first. Quantities in the recipe card below are a reliable starting point, but the list is flexible.

• Chicken bones (about 3 lb): carcass from a roast chicken, backs, necks, wings, or leftover bones.
• Chicken feet (1 lb, optional but recommended): greatly increase gelatin and collagen. Look for cleaned feet from high-quality sources when possible.
• Vegetables: onion, carrots, and celery, or a mix of vegetable scraps (onion skins, carrot ends, celery leaves).
• Aromatics: fresh thyme, bay leaves, parsley stems; use potent herbs sparingly so they don’t dominate.
• Salt & pepper: to taste; season lightly and adjust after cooking.
• Acid: 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar / 1/4 cup dry white wine) helps draw minerals from the bones.
• Filtered water: enough to cover the bones and scraps, leaving room below the Instant Pot max line.

Tip: Apple cider vinegar or another mild acid helps extract minerals like calcium and magnesium from the bones, improving nutrient density.

Substitutions

Use what you have on hand. Common substitutions that work well:

• Bones: roasted carcass, raw backs, necks, drumstick bones, or a mix of poultry bones.
• Veggie scraps: onion skins, celery leaves, mushroom stems, carrot peels, parsnip peels, or whole vegetables.
• Aromatics: garlic (with skin if desired), parsley stems, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, or dried herbs.

How to make gelatinous bone broth

Gelation comes from collagen extracted from connective tissue and cartilage. If your broth doesn’t gel, it’s still nutritious — you likely just have a lower collagen-to-water ratio. Use more bones (or include chicken feet) and keep the water level just enough to cover the contents for the best chance of a firm gel.

Chicken feet bone broth

Chicken feet may seem unusual, but they are an inexpensive collagen powerhouse and are often available at ethnic markets, specialty grocers, or direct from farmers. If you can source pastured chicken feet, they’ll give the richest gelatin. If your chicken is conventionally raised, you can still make a nutritious broth with carcass and backs even without feet.

Pro tip: Look for feet already cleaned of the yellow membrane; if present, they need to be prepared before cooking.

Helpful tips

• Make-ahead: Broth freezes well. Divide into portions for quick use in recipes.
• Food safety: Fat rising to the top is normal and can form a protective seal in the fridge. If you won’t use it within a week, freeze the broth.
• Use the fat: Rendered fat makes a flavorful cooking fat for sautéing vegetables or making gravies.

Step-by-step instructions

Full measurements and a printable recipe are in the recipe card below. In short:

Step 5. Carefully remove solids and transfer them to a colander set over a bowl to collect the liquid.

Step 6. Strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve into jars or a container. Cool slightly before refrigerating or freezing.

Helpful tip: Cooking time is flexible, but longer pressure cooking extracts more collagen and flavor.

Serving suggestions

Use bone broth for sipping from a mug, as a base for soups and stews, to cook grains, to thin sauces or gravies, or to reheat and add moisture to leftovers. It can replace water in many recipes to boost flavor and nutrition.

Storage and freezing instructions

To store: Keep broth in airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Wide-mouth jars work well.

To freeze: Leave at least 1 inch of headspace in jars to allow for expansion. Alternatively, freeze portions in trays (1-cup Souper Cubes or ice cube trays) then transfer frozen portions to labeled freezer bags.

FAQs

Printable Recipe