Instant Pot Chicken and Rice is the perfect one-pot dinner recipe. A delicious comfort food to enjoy all year round! Make either chicken breast and white rice or chicken thighs and brown rice.
Save on time and dishes with this quick and easy recipe made entirely in the electric pressure cooker. Two of my most popular Instant Pot recipes are Instant Pot Rice and Instant Pot Chicken. So I decided to combine the two and make a one-pot meal out of both.
The advantage of a pressure cooker is that water doesn’t evaporate. Grains like rice and chicken can be cooked together perfectly because you use less water for the rice while the chicken sits on top and gets cooked with just the steam. The result is a super-duper tender and juicy chicken and fluffy rice.
If you don’t have an Instant Pot though, you can still enjoy this delicious recipe by making regular 1-Pot Chicken and Rice on the stove.
Instant Pot Chicken Breast and White Rice
The original recipe initially was for chicken breasts and white rice cooked together in the Instant Pot. After extensive testing, I found the right amount of cooking time to achieve fluffy rice and juicy chicken. After 5 minutes high-pressure and 10 minutes natural pressure release, the chicken is JUST cooked. It won’t be dry but it shouldn’t be pink at all, just white.
It’s important to note that if your pin drops before the 10 minutes, the pot most likely didn’t get to high pressure and the chicken might be undercooked. Double-check before you start that the sealing knob is in the sealing position, and no air or steam comes out of the knob.
Instant Pot Chicken Thighs and Rice
Some people asked me for versions of the original recipe but using either brown rice instead of white, or chicken thighs instead of breasts. After what feels like a million test trials, I finally got the formula. Yay!
Brown rice takes triple the time to cook than white rice and would dry out the chicken breasts in the process. The secret is to use bone-in chicken thighs with brown rice. The result was absolutely amazing.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- Chicken – use chicken breasts or chicken thighs. I recommend using chicken breasts no bigger than 6.5oz (180g). If too big, cut them into 1” cubes to ensure they cook through. If using chicken thighs, go for bone-in skinless thighs.
- Cilantro – you’ll need 1 whole bunch of fresh cilantro to make the flavorful cilantro water for the rice. I suggest you don’t replace it, but if needed, you could use parsley. Just keep in mind that it has a slightly stronger flavor.
- Avocado oil – I recommend using a high-smoke point fat, such as avocado oil, ghee or bacon fat. This is important so the fat doesn’t burn at the bottom of the Instant Pot.
- Onion – use one small white or yellow onion.
- Garlic – you will need two cloves.
- Rice – use white basmati or brown basmati rice depending on what piece of chicken you’ll be cooking. I don’t recommend using any other type of rice because they need different cooking times on the Instant Pot.
- Carrots – a staple in many rice recipes. 1.5 or 2 medium carrots should yield a cup when chopped. You can also use baby carrots.
- Celery – when cooked, celery adds great flavor. For this chicken and rice recipe, you will need 2-3 celery stalks.
- Red bell pepper – the more veggies the better. I love red bell pepper for its color and texture. Orange or yellow bell pepper work great too.
How to Make Instant Pot Chicken and Rice
- Season Chicken – add sea salt and pepper generously to both sides of chicken breast or chicken thighs. Set aside.
- Prep Veggies – peel and dice the carrots. Deseed and dice the red bell pepper, and dice the celery. Also, finely chop a medium onion and two cloves of garlic.
- Prep Cilantro Water – add a bunch of cilantro and 1 cup of room-temperature water into a blender. Blend until completely smooth and no bits of cilantro are left.
- Preheat Instant Pot – press the “Sauté” button on the panel to preheat the pot.
- Sauté Onion and Garlic – once the Instant Pot display says “hot”, add a drizzle of oil or fat and then add the chopped onion and garlic. Sauté until translucent.
- Add Remaining Ingredients – this is a very important step and you need to work fast! Once the onion and garlic are ready, add the rice, season with salt and pepper, then add the cilantro water. Give a quick stir, then add the diced vegetables on top of the rice (make sure not to mix them in). Then, place the chicken on top of the veggies and close the lid immediately. The reason for this is to avoid too much water from evaporating so you don’t get the nasty “burn warning” on your Instant Pot. (See my tips to avoid the burn warning below).
- Set the Instant Pot – Seal the pot lid and turn the pressure valve to the “sealing” position. then press the “Cancel” button. Now press the “Manual” button and select 6 minutes high pressure if you’re cooking chicken breast with white rice. Or select 22 minutes high pressure if you’re cooking chicken thighs with brown rice instead.
- Release Pressure – once the Instant Pot beeps, wait for full natural pressure release. This can take anywhere from 15-25 minutes until the safety pin drops on its own.
- Shred Chicken and Serve – when the Instant Pot chicken and rice is finished cooking, open the lid and shred the chicken using two forks. Then mix everything together and serve immediately. Sprinkle some chopped cilantro on top and dive in!
Tips To Avoid The Burn Warning
Sometimes Instant Pots can be finicky and give you the Burn Warning even when you think you made everything right. After some trial and error, I found some tips that will help you avoid the burn warning:
- Don’t skimp on the fat for sautéing the onion and garlic. Be generous.
- After sautéing the onion and garlic, make sure there are no burnt bits and pieces stuck to the bottom of the pot. If necessary add a splash of water and deglaze the bottom with a wooden spoon to scrape everything off.
- Have ingredients already measured out and ready to go so no time is wasted. This is especially important for the diced vegetables. Have them chopped and all in one bowl ready to add.
- Once you add the rice, add the cilantro water immediately and stir. Do not let the dry rice sit on the hot bottom of the pot without liquid for more than 5 seconds.
- Do not mix the vegetables and chicken in the cilantro water. Let them sit on top of the rice.
- Put the lid on quickly. The longer it takes to close the pot, the more liquid evaporates. This increases the chance to get the burn warning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely! As long as you choose the right cooking time to ensure either are well cooked through it is perfectly safe to cook both at the same time.
Yes! As long as you make sure chicken reaches 165F internal temperature it is 100% safe to add to the Instant Pot.
If you add dry or rinsed rice to an already preheated or hot Instant Pot and don’t add liquid to it at the same time or very quickly after your rice will immediately stick to the bottom and start burning.
Instant Pot Chicken and Rice
Equipment
- instant pot
Ingredients
- 2 5oz / 10 oz chicken breasts / bone-in skinless chicken thighs - (Either 2 five-ounce chicken breasts if you are making the recipe with white rice. OR. 2 ten-ounce bone-in chicken thighs if you are making the recipe with brown rice.)
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 cup water - (at room temperature, not cold!)
- 1/2 Tbsp ghee or bacon fat or avocado oil
- 1 small diced onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 cup white basmati rice or brown basmati rice - (choose white or brown depending on the type of chicken you are using)
- 1 cup diced carrot
- 1 cup diced celery
- 1 cup diced red bell pepper
- Salt
- Pepper
- cilantro for garnishing
Instructions
- Generously season chicken with salt and pepper on both sides and set aside.
- Peel and dice carrot, dice celery, deseed and dice bell pepper.
- Add cilantro and room-temperature water into a blender and blend until completely smooth.
- Peel and chop onion and garlic.
- Preheat Instant Pot by pressing the “sauté” button.
- Once the Instant Pot's display says "hot": add fat or oil, chopped onion, and garlic, and sauté until translucent. Stir often. Make sure no burnt bits of onion or garlic are stuck to the bottom of the pot. If for some reason there are, deglaze by adding a tablespoon or two of water and scrape with a wooden to remove all bits from the bottom.
- Now work fast: add rice, salt and pepper to Instant Pot and then pour in cilantro water and give it a quick stir. Add diced vegetables on top in one layer (do not mix in!) and then top with seasoned chicken breasts. Then IMMEDIATELY close lid to avoid water from evaporating (<-important!)
- Turn venting knob to "sealing", hit "cancel" and then "manual" and adjust to 6 minutes high pressure for chicken breast / white rice version OR 22 minutes for chicken thigh / brown rice version.
- Wait for full natural pressure release. This means once the pot beeps don't do anything. Don't touch the valve and instead just wait for the safety pin to drop on its own. This can take anywhere from 15-25 minutes.
- Open the pot and enjoy the smell! Then use two forks to shred the chicken. Mix it all and serve immediately with some fresh cilantro sprinkled on top.
Notes
- *Please read the blog post section where I go into detail about what to pay attention to in order to succeed to avoid any error messages from the pot.
- nutritional info is for white rice and chicken breast.
Nutrition
Maple Mustard Ham
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Quick & Easy Chicken And Rice Casserole
Jennifer S says
I made two double recipes of this today.
The first I used chicken fat to sauté the onions and garlic. I used organic chicken broth instead of water, and also used two chicken leg quarters. It was delicious!!
The second batch I did everything the same, except I added a can of cream of chicken soup on top of the veggies. This is cooking as I write this, so I’ll have to update this tomorrow after I have it for dinner.
Jennifer S says
The only thing that Inwould do differently next time, would be to double the amount of veggies.
Eric says
Burn. Followed the steps. Bottom of pot was deglazed before adding the rest of the ingredients. The water was absorbed by the rice.
Shaena says
Gonna take a crack at this, but I’m gonna sub low sodium chicken broth instead of cilantro water. My kids have the cilantro=soap glitch, where my hubs and I do not. We are also an ARFID due to autism household, so hopefully this will find its way successfully into my kids bellies. Fingers crossed.
Ruby says
We have been making this for a few years now and our whole family loves it. We switched (from cilantro) to Basil and it is just as lovely. We never get the burn issues that others have commented about. Thank you for sharing
Trish says
This recipe was a horrible FLOP! I followed all of the instructions provided regarding the potential burn error and still ended up having issues. We spent $15 for ingredients and had to throw everything away. I will not be attempting this recipe again.
Lorena Grater says
I’m really sorry to read this. I’m at a point where I believe there are simply some Instant Pots that heat at higher temperatures than others. I have never been able to replicate the burn issues some people have and I’ve tried with 3 different Instant Pots :( I wish I could give even more tips.
Neil says
How long should the cooking time be if using bone in chicken thighs with white instead of brown rice?
Lorena Grater says
I do not recommend this combination as the white rice will overcook or the bone in chicken thighs will undercook.
Neil says
That is what I figured with the bone in. Do you think white rice would be okay if I used the thighs but stripped from the bone? So dark meat but no bone?
April says
I’m about to make this and I’ll let you know how it turns out. However there’s a discrepancy in what you wrote in your post and in the instructions. In your post you wrote “ I found the right amount of cooking time to achieve fluffy rice and juicy chicken. After 5 minutes high-pressure and 10 minutes natural pressure release, the chicken is JUST cooked.”But the instructions are different. I’m going to follow the instructions and hope it turns out okay. Just wanted to point this out to you.
Lorena Grater says
I’m sorry for the confusion. That paragraph is to explain that your pot should need at the very least 10 minutes to release pressure, that at that point the chicken is “JUST” cooked through and that if your pot releases pressure faster something is wrong and the chicken won’t be cooked through. The pressure release “should” take 15-20 minutes and you’ll get the best result that way.
April says
Well I got the dreaded burn. It’s crazy how fast the rice burned. After I got the burn error I went to take everything out. There was no steam at all and there was maybe a half inch of burnt rice on the bottom. I think you’re right about the heating element being the issue.
All was not lost though. I threw everything (including non-burned rice) in a casserole dish, covered with foil, and baked at 325 for 45 minutes. It was really good!
Lorena Grater says
I’m really glad you were able to save the rice. If there was no steam left and the rice completely burned I do wonder if your lid sealed well and got to pressure? Did the safety pin jump up? If not, then all the water evaporated quickly through the rim or the valve and that’s what caused the burn warning.
Poornima says
Having gone through all the comments and the rice burn issue, I think the problem lies in the rice to water ratio. In India, we always cook rice at a ratio of 1:2, i.e. 1 parts rice and 2 parts water. Also keeping basmati rice soaked for at least 30 minutes prior to cooking would give you longer grains. My 2 cents.
I will be trying the recipe today with the suggested tweaks.
Lorena Grater says
In a regular pot on the stove you have water evaporation, hence more water than rice. In the Instant Pot there is no evaporation. With a 1:2 ratio you will get extremely mushy rice.
Jessica says
I did exactly as recommended as far as trying to avoid the “burn notice”, but it continually came on which wrecked the timing and the whole meal was overcooked by the time I let the steam release naturally. I’ll go back to doing chicken and rice in the oven, don’t like wondering if my food is burning or having to release pressure to make sure. Thanks anyway.
Lorena Grater says
I’m really sorry this happened to you. I have come to the conclusion that some instant pots simply heat too fast. I have even contacted the company Instant Pot directly to look over my recipe and offer me some insight as to why some people have this issue when I have never been able to recreate it and they unfortunately weren’t of much help either. They couldn’t figure out what the problem could be. I have even considered deleting my recipe but the majority of people seem to be successful so I’m leaving it up but always with this feeling that I’m failing some of my readers :(
Yolanda Manning says
I’ve made twice now and twice it’s been perfect. I followed the recipe just as it is and it’s delicious. I didn’t get the “burn” message like sone have mentioned. I did deglaze a bit with some water though. I like a bit of more spices so I think next time I’ll add to it and see how it turns out. Great recipe! We love it.
Ruby says
This is a staple for our household.
We now make it with basil instead of cilantro but both are great! No burn issues for us at all.
So grateful for the recipe
Alli says
We just got our Instant Pot for Christmas and the first thing we made were spare ribs. They were amazing. The next thing I made for the family was this recipe. I did everything in the recipe, though I used boneless, skinless thighs. Still followed exactly and it turned out delicious! I was nervous with the rice and hearing about people dealing with burning, but after adding a little extra water before adding the veggies and chicken really worked and I cooked it for 22 minutes. We will be making this again!
Lauren says
I got to this by way of your how to cook any rice in the Instant Pot. So I decided to try it because you said it’s your most popular recipe. It looked easy enough, and I’m trying to get over my fear of the IP (I’ve had it for about 5 years now and it’s still my last favorite cooking gadget).
This recipe is a prime example why I can’t fall in love with the IP. I read through your entire post three times, so I thought for sure I had it. I’m also normally a comment reader, but there one time I don’t— guess what, I had problems. Burn notice. Right now I have the rice on the stovetop cooking and the chicken in the oven. So several extra dirty pans, a lot of extra work and stress. I hope it’s salvageable because we don’t have money to just throw away.
You really need to change your directions instead of adding bits of updates or alternative cooking ideas throughout the post. Particularly you shouldn’t be only adding into and updates to comments. Yes there’s some in the recipe and extremely long post, but they didn’t say to saute the onions and garlic in a pan on the stove then add to a cold IP. That may have saved our dinner IF it was in the recipe.
Sorry so long, just really bummed out at this point. It’s been a hectic day, we’re hungry and tired and what was supposed to be a simple dish is a hot mess.
Lorena Grater says
Lauren, I am so so sorry the recipe didn’t work out for you and you are absolutely right. I should sit down and rewrite this whole post. I love the instant pot so much and I want everybody to love it and yet this recipe is my nemesis. I have a love/hate relationship with it because it’s caused me the biggest headache of all recipes on my website. It’s incredibly delicious and people that have a not so finnicky instant pot absolutely love it, too. The reason I haven’t deleted it. However, A LOT of people have the burn warning problem and despite all tests I’ve run I cannot recreate the problem so I can only “guess” what the problem is. I’m at a point where I blame individual Instant Pots and their heat sensors because I’ve even been in contact with Instant Pot the company to figure out what the problem with my recipe is and they assured me that the burn warning should NOT be triggered with this recipe. I really hope you won’t give up on the Instant Pot and ME either. Please try one of my non-tomato based stews to give it another chance.
Emily says
Hello, I appreciate this recipe very much, but I experienced the same burn warning over and over again even as I added a bit more water (to equal a 1:1.5 rice to water ratio). I followed your tips and tricks to avoid, but no dice. I now had to remove everything and put it into the oven covered in foil, which I was trying to avoid. Using a standard 8qt instant pot.
Lorena Grater says
Hi Emily, I am so sorry you weren’t successful. This recipe is my nemesis, sigh. Some instant pots are super moody I’ve learned over the years. I recommend browning the onions in a pan and then adding all ingredients to a COLD instant pot, then setting. It seems like this works for everybody with a moody instant pot.
Jennifer says
Hello! I love this recipe and have made it a few times already. How would you go about doubling it? I did a bit of reading, and thought I should double the cooking liquid. I followed the instructions and worked quickly, but I keep getting a burn warning. What can I do to avoid this in the future? Thanks!
Cathy says
I think the problem with the burn warning might accompany the increased amount of ingredients. I had some extra chicken, so I thought I’d throw it in and use it for salads. Then I got the burn warning. I think that whenever we add ingredients, the pot increases the time needed to build up pressure. That’s probably too long for the rice.
Lorena Grater says
Good point! I never considered that.
Lorena Grater says
I have never tried doubling it. In “theory” it should work but maybe it doesn’t because like Cathy says it takes too long to get to pressure. I would sauté the onion in a separate pan, then add all ingredients (doubled) to a cold Instant Pot and then set it. You might be able to avoid the burn warning this way.
JW says
Pretty good! Would make again with some changes. I used bacon fat, and might deglaze with some white wine (didn’t need to deglaze, but it will add some flavor).
It was very cilantro flavor heavy (which I don’t mind, but some might). I would probably use 1 cup chicken broth instead of water next time.
Depending on who I’m cooking for, I will add some smoked paprika and red pepper flakes.
I cooked it for 7 mins, but the chicken came out 97% cooked. I shredded, and then microwaved for 2 mins before mixing it together.
My 8 yr old destroyed it, and his seconds.
My 5 yr old (and picky eater) ate it without a fuss!
Prep time does take much longer to dice all veggies, and I even used a food processor.