Instapot Super Broth

Gather your ingredients! Make sure that your livers, backs, feet, and veggie (if frozen) are thawed.

*Pro-tip: keep a bread bag in your freezer for your onion skins, carrot tops and peelings, celery butts and tops etc rejected from normal dishes. While they may not be good for plated dishes, they are a fantastic addition to any broth and a great way to get life out of things that may well have ended up in the garbage, or compost pile!

My favorite veggies:

• Carrot peelings, and carrot tops. 
• Onion skins, and butts
• Beet/turnip tops
• Celery tops/butts
• Lots, and lots, and lots of whole garlic cloves. 
• Rosemary/sage if you're feeling fancy.

Preparing your brothing brew:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F. 
2. Arrange your backs, liver, veggies, and herbs on a roasting rack or baking sheet. Roast for 30-45 min.
3. While your backs, etc. are roasting, its time to prep your chicken feet.

Preparing chicken feet:

1. If your chicken still have the outer membrane, we will need to remove it - In a stock pot, add chicken feet, apple cider vinegar, and enough water to cover the feet. 
2. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Strain and blanch the feet in cold water, allow to cool then remove membranes. 

Chuckin' it in a pot**:

1. Whip out your cauldron- er, I mean ... instantpot. Plug that baby in. 
2. Add 6ish chicken feet, one back and 1/2 your veggies to the pot. Leave the remaining back, feet and veggies out to cool. 
3. Fill your instant pot with water to the max fill line, and put the lid on. 
4. Settings may vary by brand/unit: I have a regular instant pot that has a "Soup/Stew" setting. The standard setting is 26 minutes - I usually increase the time to 45 minutes. Make sure the release valve is set to "Airtight" then walk away for a while. 

Coolin' off:

1. Once your instapot has depressurized safely, take off the lid and, using potholder, remove the inner pot. 
2. Pour your broth through a strainer into a large stainless bowl. Cover your bowl with a cheesecloth or a tea towel, set aside to cool. 
3. Dump the strainer contents into your compost bucket, and chuck the second batch into the instant pot. 

Final Touches:

Some people like to pre-salt their broth prior to freezing their broth. Personally, I do not since I am never sure what I will end up using it for - It is not uncommon for me to use chicken broth in ham soups since I usually do not have pork broth on hand. Ham, being inherently salty, would oversalt a pre-salted broth. 

How you package your broth is completely up to you. I usually freeze all of my broth using disposable quart-sized freezer bags in 4-cup and 2-cup portions. I then save the remainder in ice cube trays for those recipes that call for smaller portions of broth. If you make a lot of recipes that call for smaller portions of broth, then make more cubes than bags. 

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**If you don't have an instantpot or pressure pot, you can use a large stock pot, or crockpot, to simmer contents for 4+ hours, replacing water as it evaporates off. Make sure to skim off the "scum" that percolates to the top.