15/12/2017

Turkey Stock made in an Instant Pot electric pressure cooker

Although I’ve put this post in the ‘recipes’ category, it’s hardly a recipe at all.

To make turkey stock, or any other meat stock really, it’s simply a case of putting the bones plus any scraps of meat, skin and fat plus selected vegetables in the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker, covering with water, cooking at high pressure for an hour and leaving so that the pressure releases naturally.

Of course making stock without a pressure cooker isn’t difficult, you’ll just need a lot more time (at least 3 hours I’d say) and, while the smell of good stock can be very appetising, it can get a little unpleasant if it hangs around too long so it’s great that the Instant Pot seals in all the flavours and doesn’t fill your kitchen with fatty steam!

The bones in this case were the stripped carcass of a cooked turkey plus the turkey neck. I don’t tend to use any of the giblets in stock as I find they can give it an unpleasant, bitter taste. I also happened to have the bones from two leftover roasted chicken legs as I often use these to make a chicken and vegetable stew so those went into the pot too.

For flavouring, I just added a few black peppercorns and parsley stalks plus a very small amount of salt. Salt isn’t strictly necessary at this stage (and you certainly don’t want to add much if you’re going to reduce the stock later) but I like a little salt, if only to give me a better idea as to how strongly flavoured the stock is.

You can also flavour the stock with additional herbs such as bayleaf, rosemary or thyme although, personally, I prefer the cleaner taste that comes from using mainly bones and vegetables.

The vegetables I added were the classic ones of onion (no need to remove the skin if it’s clean), garlic, carrot and celery plus some leek.

I added water to the 8 cup level and after the cooking time was up, the liquid strained off and the bones and vegetables disgarded (ok, I did pick the meat out of the neck so the dog could eat it – I can’t stand waste) this gave me just under 1.5 litres of stock.

Once I’ve strained the finished stock, I like to cool it as quickly as possible and do this by pouring it back into the washed Instant Pot inner and then sit this in a large bowl of iced water. When cold, you can spoon off any unwanted fat before either storing the stock or using it in a recipe – the fat can be saved for cooking too if liked.

With this turkey stock, I used 1 litre of it to make turkey gravy, shown in the right hand image below. I did this my making a roux with half of the fat reserved from cooking the turkey plus some flour, then gradually added the stock, seasoned it with salt and pepper before leaving it to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

I put the remaining half litre of stock in the freezer for another use.