Why would you put a chicken in your pressure cooker?
You can cook it in an hour in your oven and it will be a lot better.
Chicken pretty well turns to mush in a pressure cooker.
Stick an oniona and lemon which you have piereced several times with a fork inside the bird, put it in a pan, rub it with grease....oil, butter...,bacon grease...whatever....and pop it into a 450 oven for about 50 to 60 minutes.
You'll see
Linda C

Well I want to play with the cooker and I read that a whole chicken would take only 20 minutes.... I've made chicken in the oven before.... want to try something new. I want to use the pressure cooker for more than beans! I know that a chicken doesn't need to be tenderized as do meats that are better suited for pressure cookers... I just want to save time. (Also hope it will speed up the process of boiling peanuts, but we'll see)

Maybe this will help Bobby.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken in a Pressure Cooker

I love chicken cooked in a pressure cooker for things like enchiladas, chicken 'n dumplings, pot pies, and chicken salad. It's moist & ultra-tender.

Have fun!

/tricia

Cook your chicken in the oven....go buy some cheap flank steak and make a stew in the pressure cooker.
By the tiem you put the chicken in the cooker, bring it up to pressure, cook for 25 minutes, let the pressure decrease naturally, put it into the oven for 15 minutes to brown the skin....you might have better just popped it into a roaster and cooked the chicken at high heat.....and you would only have one pan to wash.....and think of all those browned bits for gravy or chicken broth.
Buy some green beans to try your cooker....should only take about 2 minutes, and have soem parsleyed potatoes....about 5 minutes.
Linda C

"...some cheap flank steak..."

If only there were such a thing where I live. Fresh brisket was over $4.00/lb. today.

How about a good chili made with a cheap (whatever that means) cut of beef? That should be a good use of pressure cooking. Cook the beans separately if you want beans.

Jim

Yeah there is no such thing as cheap flank steak in my neck of the woods.. I checked Costco yesterday $5.99lb and I don't need "three" of them..And that is atleast a dollar if not two cheaper then the grocery store.
Brisket is only 2.99lb if you by a "side" hunk cryovac'd.

Bobby, check the link I posted out. And read the whole thing.

I stew whole chickens in the pressure cooker - they are great for soup, etc. To answer your question, I usually put in 6 cups of liquid, plus the veggies (onion, celery, carrots) and spices/herbs. Unless it's a really small bird, I think that 25 minutes may be a little short on the time though.

I just bought an old Presto pressure cooker like my mother used all the time I was growing up, at a garage sale. It probably holds about 4 quarts but of course you can't fill a pressure cooker to it's maximum volume. It had its original cookbook with it, which I thought was neat.

I would certainly recommend pressure cooking for a baking hen. And I see nothing wrong with pressuring a fryer. A pressure cooker is not like a pressure canner in that you have to wait a long time for the pressure to build. You just heat it long enough for the steam to start escaping, and this doesn't take long at all with a pressure cooker of this size. Then you put on the petcock and regulate the heat when the petcock begins to rock. Your food is cooking all this time so it's not like it's wasted energy.

When you bake something in an oven, you're heating up the entire oven cavity so if you just have one dish in the oven you're wasting energy, IMHO. And, if you're doing it in the summer while you're air-conditioning, there's that to consider as well.

The book says, for a braised chicken, 2 to 4 pounds, whole, cooking time after stem reaches cook position: 20-30 minutes. Amount of liquid to be added: 1/4 cup water. It recommends searing on all sides beforehand. It looks to me like this still comes in under an hour. You could still put your lemon and onion in the cavity, although I think I'd halve or quarter the lemon.

I plan to do some playing with my cooker, too!

I sometimes PC chicken parts for stock and dog food, but I can't imagine the whole chicken myself. OTOH, if you want a cool pressure cooker trick, try making risotto. It comes out perfectly, with absolutely minimal effort. Purists will snort that it can't be risotto if you don't spend 20 minutes straight stirring the damn stuff, but I doubt anyone could possibly tell the difference when they taste it.

soooo....What'd you do, Bobby, and how was it?
Linda C

I haven't and a chance to do anything yet with the chicken... I caught a terrible cold from work and have spent the entire day in bed (what a way to spend a day off... maybe my cat will do the laundry, marketing, and cleaning for me!). I have carrots, celery, and onion, and egg noodles, so that chicken will go for soup... if I can muster the energy. I really want to play with my new toy, but I haven't even had the strength to wash it yet! So frustrating!

Thanks for the advice everyone. I wasn't expecting the chicken to come out like a baked chicken with crispy skin... I just wanted to play with it and see what happened. I just didn't want to use too little water and have the thing run dry because the manual warns about that being dangerous.

Bobby, wash the pot and put the chicken and veggies into it.....chicken doesn't keep welol, and chicken soup will be good for your cold.

Oh Bobby hope you feel better.

I love using my pc for making chicken soup. I use chicken broth instead of water. 6 cups. Good luck!!!

Thanks... I did use it to make chicken soup. Well, I used the "pressure" part to make the stock. The stock was very dark, much darker than stock I've made just in a pot. I finihsed the soup in the pressure cooker body sans lid and it was great. Fun to watch/listen to the pressure regulator weight rock back and forth.

I used my pressure cooker to make broasted chicken. Be sure to soak chicken in a salt water brine for 1 hour before cooking, it will add a lot of flavor. I just battered the chicken, deep fried for 1 min, the put on top and bring to pressure. Cook for 10 min. Even large breast came out juicy and done. Just be sure you do not fill the pot up with oil and chicken past the fill line!

Kris

I use the pc all the time to cook chicken--comes out nice and juicy, especially if you use broth instead of water. The only downside is that the skin comes out pretty clammy. Yuck. So I use it for skinless parts, for the most part.

Kris--I really don't think you're supposed to do what you're doing--home pressure cookers aren't made to operate with oil. Yes, that's how Harlan Sanders invented fast food chicken, but the instructions on all my pressure cookers specifically warn against that.