Boiled meat is suitable for any diet. This nutritious treat complements salads, sandwiches, soups, and main dishes. Plus, boiling provides an additional ingredient—broth. To enjoy tender pieces or aromatic broth, it’s essential to know how long to boil the chicken until it’s ready.
Table of Contents
This article will help you. Here you’ll find tables with recommendations on boiling chicken meat. We’ll also look at the cooking times for different by-products and less popular parts of the chicken.
How long to boil a whole chicken ?
A chilled carcass weighing 1 kg will be ready in 60 minutes. To accurately determine how long to boil the chicken after it starts boiling, it’s preferable to understand the product’s origin. A broiler should be boiled for significantly less time than a soup chicken. A chick has tender meat and a relatively fragile skeleton. A bird intended for soup is older, its bony part is better formed, and the meat layer is thinner.
Remember that breeds raised in the village have a more developed muscular system. Therefore, homegrown chicken should be simmered even longer; otherwise, the meat will remain tough. Older individuals should be marinated before cooking. Generously coat the carcass with lemon juice or kefir and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. The table indicates how long to boil the chicken until it’s ready after boiling.
- Broiler chicken: 1 hour
- Soup chicken: 2 hours
- Village chicken: 3–4 hours
- Rooster: From 3 hours
Trying to figure out how long to boil chicken for soup, simply add 30–60 minutes to the indicated time, and the broth will be especially rich.
The intervals mentioned are for chilled meat. It’s best to let frozen preparations thaw. When this isn’t possible, the chicken must be filled with cold water and placed on the fire. To determine how long to boil frozen chicken, add 10–20 minutes to the table time.
Read more : How Long to Bake Chicken: Legs, Thighs, Entire Chicken ?
Preparation of different parts
Knowing how long to boil an entire chicken won’t help when you only have parts of the bird. However, understanding the peculiarities of different types of products makes it easier to decide on the final dish. The table below breaks down how long to boil chicken pieces after boiling.
- Chicken feet (for jelly): 2 hours
- Soup set: 45–50 minutes
- Chicken feet (for further cooking): 40–45 minutes
- Bone-in breast: 40–45 minutes
- Offal (liver, gizzards, hearts): 40 minutes
- Quarter chicken: 40 minutes
- Drumsticks: 35 minutes
- Thighs: 30 minutes
- Wings: 25–30 minutes
- Chicken fillet: 15 minutes
Now you know exactly how long to boil chicken fillet or legs. For juicier meat, try turning off the heat after the minimum time or 5 minutes earlier. Let the products sit in hot water for another 10 minutes.
How long to boil chicken in an Instant Pot (or similar) ?
The Instant Pot is excellent for preparing poultry. However, the values indicating how long to boil chicken in a pot and how long in an instant pot are almost identical. A whole carcass will be boiled in about 1 hour. For pieces, it’s best to set the timer for 30 minutes. If you plan to boil chicken for broth, increase the cooking time by 20–30 minutes.
We hope that, thanks to this article, you can now easily determine how many minutes to boil chicken or how long to boil chicken pieces.
