Instant Pot Chicken with Warm Bread and Arugula Salad

Why This Recipe Works

When she put her roast chicken with warm bread salad on the menu in the late ’80s, it was a real hit. Now, a few decades later, it still is. The chicken was deeply bronzed, the meat juicy and well seasoned. The bread was tossed with savory chicken drippings. Currants, just-softened scallions and garlic, salad greens, and a sharp vinaigrette completed the salad. It was a perfect meal. But the recipe is anything but simple. It's a meticulously detailed four-page essay that could all be tackled easily in a professional kitchen, but at home it seemed taxing. We knew the Instant Pot was the ideal vessel to deliver this meal quickly, while keeping all cooking contained in one pot. Our tribute to the Zuni Café dish involved browning bone-in chicken breasts using the highest sauté function to render prized chicken fat, which we then used to lightly fry chunks of rustic bread directly in the pot. Next, we pressure-poached the chicken in tarragon water to infuse it with moisture and flavor. While the chicken cooked, we marinated currants, scallions, and fennel in a zippy, mustardy dressing that plumped the currants while softening and mellowing the fennel and scallions. For our third and final usage of the Instant Pot's versatility, the leftover chicken cooking liquid was simmered until it transformed into a concentrated essence, in which we tossed the toasted bread chunks to imbue them with masses of flavor while retaining their chicken-fat-fried crunch. The final dish was a bright, vinegary base with sweet hits of plump currants, warm chicken, and unforgettably crunchy cubes of toasted bread to add big hits of flavor without making the overall meal heavy.