Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe with Frozen Chicken (2024)

FAQs

Can you cook chicken soup with a frozen chicken? ›

To make homemade chicken noodle soup from scratch, all you have to do is sauté up the veggies until they become tender. Then you'll add the broth to the same pot. You'll throw in frozen chicken breasts and cook them through. Then take them out, cut them up and add them back again with the egg noodles.

Place the frozen chicken breasts in the Instant Pot inner pot. If you are cooking more than one, make sure they are separated to achieve even cooking throughout. To separate frozen chicken breasts, place them in cool water until they have thawed enough to pull apart. Add one cup of chicken broth to the pot.

If your boneless chicken breast winds up with a weird, rubbery texture, it probably means that you need to cook it longer. In general, the Instant Pot does better with longer cook times for meat.

Cold-poaching the chicken breasts, then removing them until the end of the cooking process, guarantees a perfectly tender and juicy texture. Using stock reinforces the flavor of the broth, creating a more deeply flavorful soup.

Great news, according to the USDA, it is totally safe — you just have to keep in mind that frozen chicken will take about one and a half times longer to cook than thawed chicken.

Information. Raw or cooked meat, poultry or casseroles can be cooked or reheated from the frozen state. However, it will take approximately one and a half times as long to cook. For example, if fresh meat takes one hour to cook, the same meat cooked frozen would take 1 1/2 hours.

Chicken can get a rubbery texture in the instant pot when over cooked. To avoid this, try not to over cook your chicken.

How to make chicken soup taste richer? ›

"If your broth is lacking in savory richness, try adding roasted onion, tomato paste, mushrooms, seaweed, soy sauce, or miso. These ingredients add umami flavor and depth to broth," she says. The choice of ingredient depends on the recipe, though.

Koenig recommends going by feel rather than the clock, and simmering until the chicken is tender and falling off the bones. Total simmering time will depend on the size of your chicken. Keep the water going at a slow, steady simmer during cooking. Too vigorous and Koenig says you can end up with a thin-tasting broth.

Overcooking: Chicken dries out when it's cooked for too long. Poultry, unlike red meats, does not have as much fat marbling to keep it moist, so it's easy to overcook and end up with dry meat.

So is it possible to boil frozen chicken straight from the freezer? The short answer is yes.

As long as you are boiling your frozen chicken on the stove it does not matter if you thaw it or cook it from frozen. Thawing your chicken before boiling will make it cook faster but the end result will be the same tender chicken.

You can cook frozen chicken by following certain guidelines. The general rule of thumb is to add another 50 percent of cooking time to the time suggested in the recipe. For example, if a soup recipe calls for cooking it for 60 minutes, plan to cook it for 90 minutes.

Skinless, boneless chicken breast halves: cook 12 to 15 minutes. (That means boiling frozen chicken would take 18 to 22 minutes.) If you want poached chicken even faster, you can cut the chicken into 2-inch pieces and cook eight to 10 minutes.