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
Arijana Lukic says
Today I got my first IP and this is the first recipe I made! I did white rice with chicken breast for 6min (although I don’t know if it’s better perhaps for 5min. We are at 645m above altitude). This recipe is a keeper for us, however we have a question…We want to cook it with Black Rice (and we only do chicken breast). What’s your suggestion? Cook the breast separate from the rice and veggies? Or cook together but for 30min?
Please let me know.
Thank you so much!
Lorena says
I strongly suggest cooking separately. Chicken breast after 30 minutes in the pressure cooker will be extremely tough to eat. I recommend pan-frying for chicken breast actually. That will give you the juiciest chicken.
Kathy says
I REALLY don’t care for cilantro. Any suggestions? How about basil and or parsley?
Lorena says
Basil! I don’t recommend parsley as it’ll become quite bitter cooked. Basil is a better option.
Jackie says
Instant pot newbie! This was only the third recipe I have attempted using my new instant pot and it did not disappoint! My only adjustment was olive oil instead of ghee. Came out perfectly! Looking forward to adding this to my meal prepping. Thanks for sharing!
kcatmull says
Gosh I love this (brown rice/chicken thighs version) and it’s my husband’s new favorite. Recipe worked perfectly for me. Thanks so much for sharing your talent with us.
Lorena says
I’m so happy to read that :)
RaiderRach says
Just tried it, turned out great! Did the chicken breast and white rice version , no burn notice. Used bacon fat to sauté onions and garlic. Topped it off with cilantro, some sliced avocado and tortilla chip strips for some crunch. My kids loved it. Thank you :-)
gloria kannenberg says
I am a newbie to instant pot, but I followed recipe exactly as written, even though I was hesitant with remarks of burning. Amazing results!! Brown rice and chicken thigh recipe came out so good! I did change seasoning of chicken thighs with a mexican seasoning mix that I found for another recipe instead of salt and pepper. Also, when time was up, I added one can each of rinsed and drained red kidney beans and black beans and mixed everything together. Just before eating, I added lime juice and shredded cheese on top. So moist and delicious. Thank you for this amazing recipe!!! Loving all my instant pot recipes that I have tried!
Lorena says
I’m so happy it worked for you and you loved it!! It’s one of my favorite recipes and it makes me so sad that some people can’t enjoy it because of their moody Instant Pots :(
10 Texas Transplants says
Not only did this not come to pressure after following the adjustments (it burned to the bottom) and we had to cook the chicken on the stove, but there was little flavor. Perhaps if the chicken had cooked in the instant pot, the flavor would be there. As it was, the kids don’t want to try again.
We’ve used the Instant Pot for over two years and this was our first fail. We’ve never gotten a burn notice before.
Lorena says
I’m so incredibly sad to read this. I don’t know what it is with this recipe. I’ve tried infinite times to recreate the problem not only you have but also others. I don’t understand why some people get the burn warning. I’ve never gotten the burn warning before in this recipe or any other so I’m not sure what it could be. You didn’t mix the veggies in, did you? You removed the inner pot from the heating plate, added rice and cilantro water and stirred well, then added veggies and chicken on top without stirring into the rice and then placed the inner pot back into the IP and sealed it immediately? Did you use sufficient salt and pepper?
Elyse says
So I would love it if you said this could be a basic chicken and rice IP cooking time /method that could accommodate any number of flavor/ spice variations? (I want to make curry chicken and rice tonight!) As long as we dont mess with the liquid ratio? (Also, what if I subbed out some of the liquid for coconut milk?!)
Lorena says
Elyse, yes you can easily sub some of the liquid for coconut milk. What you want to pay attention to is to keep a 1:1 ratio of rice to liquid. The liquid shouldn’t be tooooo thick or you risk everything burning to the bottom but a 50/50 mix of coconut milk to water should work perfectly fine. Mix rice and liquid and spices if you want or onions/garlic etc and then place the chicken ON TOP. Make sure the rice is all submerged in the water. In my rice guide you can see how long each individual type of rice needs to cook for and in my chicken guide you can see how much team you have to cook each chicken part at least and how long you can cook it maximum, that way you can find your favorite combo.
ANGRY COOK says
THIS IS A JOKE!! I ENDED UP BAKING THIS CRAP IN THE OVEN BECAUSE THIS WOMAN HAS NO IDEA HOW TO USE AN INSTANT POT. UGH!!
Lorena says
I am very sorry you had this experience Mr. Angry Cook. I would have loved to help you troubleshoot but it looks like you are too angry to tell what went wrong. All the best to you and I hope you find recipes elsewhere that suit your cooking skills better.
DeadlyDurian says
Just wanted to say thank you for keeping your site authentic and not editing out comments or ratings that aren’t positive for the recipes. Too many sites have all these “5-star” rated recipes because the owner is only approving the positive ratings and leaving out the negative ones. When I look at comments for any recipe, I expect there to be some 1-3 stars, too!
I made this in a 6QTDUO *exactly as written* and it came out very very good. I did not tweak or adjust anything since it was my 1st go. Wouldn’t change a thing though!
Lorena says
I’m so happy it worked for you! And yes, I leave all constructive criticism on the page so everybody can get a good sense of what the recipe is like. Clearly, some people have trouble with the recipe so I want to make sure people really follow as exactly as possible by learning from others. I do delete rude comments towards me or others though to keep this community a safe place for discussion.
Mari says
This looks yummy, newbie here to IP. My question is can I use precooked chicken in this recipe and jazmin rice? Do I need to adjust the 5 min cooking time or water? Thank you
Lorena says
Hi Mari, I wouldn’t add the precooked chicken, as it will most likely dry out. Just leave it out and cook the recipe as instructed but without the chicken. Warm the chicken in a pan, shred it and add it at the end.
James says
Great recipe and now one of my dinner staples. Make it at least 2-3x a month. I’m wondering, if I wanted to double the recipe, would I be doubling the overall cook time? I’m doing the chicken breast version, btw. Thanks!
Lorena says
Hi James, I’m so happy you like the recipe :), even when you double or triple the recipe the cooking time stays the same.
Susan Aghili says
Absolutely delicious. This may be my new go-to recipe. My hubby and my finicky teen enjoyed it and had second helpings (actually, hubby even went back for 3rds). I was a little confused about the cilantro water. I was unclear whether you used the the word blend to imply blending on a blender or whether you just meant to mix well. I had my fingers crossed while it cooked, and I was so relieved once it was done and I could confirm that I had interpreted the recipe correctly. Absolutely delicious! Thanks for sharing!
Lorena says
I’m so glad you liked it Susan. I will add the word blender to the recipe card, you’re not the first one to mention they didn’t know what I meant but I couldn’t understand in which other way “blend” could be understood other than mixing in a blender. Thank you for explaining. I’m not a native speaker. Now I’ll make it clearer. I really appreciate it.
Tommy says
Could you please add the weights in grams (g) and volumes in milliliters (ml) to your recipes? Because the rest of the world uses the Metric system ;)
Assuming you’re American 1 cup translates in 178 grams of rice (hope you can confirm) and about 237 milliliters (ml) of water. Which immediately raises the question (I’m fairly new to the IP), is that enough water?
The manual says you need to add at least half a liter (500ml) of water to be able for the IP to come to pressure.
For my first try I’m definitely using 500ml of water and use the sauté function if I have to much water/moist left in the end. Better be safe then sorry :)
Thanks in advance!
Lorena says
Tommy, I’m actually German and use metric in my private kitchen all the time but my audience is 90% North American which is why I have to recipe test and write my recipes with imperial measurements. An imperial cup is 237ml volume so no single solid ingredient measured in cup form will weigh the same. I just went ahead and weighed it real quick for you. My white basmati was 200g and short grain brown rice 210g. In this recipe the important component however is that you use the same volume of water to rice ratio so you could in theory use pretty much ANY container, fill it with rice once and then with water once. That’s the best ratio for rice. Depending on the size of your instant pot you’ll need either 1 cup (237ml) or 2 cups (474ml) of water. The 6-quart needs only 1 cup and the 8-quart needs 2 cups. I have a 6-quart and 1 cup liquid is enough to come to pressure. If you’re searching for recipes in English I encourage you to invest in a set of imperial cups. They are super cheap. You can get them for under 10 Euros/Dollars.
John Walsh says
Hi,
Have you tried this recipe using brown rice with chicken breasts? The recipe looks really yummy but I prefer white meat chicken and brown rice.
Lorena says
I don’t recommend cooking chicken breast for as long as the brown rice needs. The cooking time is adjusted so the rice cooks through so you’ll have to cook the meal for 22 minutes regardless of whichever other ingredients you add. Chicken breast after 22 minutes high-pressure cooking time is way too dry for me but others have commented that they did it and didn’t mind the texture of the chicken breast so you can definitely try and decide for yourself. Chicken thighs are way more forgiving on long cooking times. You can also simply cook the rice and the chicken separately :) I love pan-frying or baking chicken breasts. That makes for the juiciest chicken breasts.
Tracy says
I followed the recipe to a T, even taking out the however I used white basmati rice and bone-in chicken thighs. I didn’t think it would make a difference, but I got the burn notice 5 times after scraping and adding more water. I gave up and threw it all away, after that many times of it burning because I just know it’s already ruined from the burnt bottom, it’ll just make it bitter and probably the rice will be gross from having to add what equaled to another cup of water. I was so disappointed it didn’t work for me! It smelled amazing, but just not wanting to deal with having to waste the food again.
Tracy says
*taking out the pot before adding the rice, etc.
Lorena says
Tracy, I am so incredibly sad the recipe didn’t work out for you. I could scream every time I read someone couldn’t make the recipe work. I just don’t get it! Others have had success with the taking the pot out because then it doesn’t touch the heating plate anymore and the white rice can’t stick to the bottom. I’m at an absolute loss why some Instant Pots do this. I just cannot understand. I’m so sorry you had to throughout the valuable ingredients :(
Jackie says
Tracy, could this be because she used WHITE rice with chicken thighs?
Lorena says
Yes, most definitely. White rice needs a very short amount of time to cook and bone-in thighs need rather long to cook. That’s why my recipe calls for brown rice when using thighs and breasts when cooking white rice.