Instant Pot Garlic Butter Chicken—tender chicken bites coated in a garlic butter sauce. Only 8 ingredients and your Instant Pot make this recipe fast and easy!
Note: the SLOW COOKER instructions are listed in recipe below
Instant Pot Garlic Butter Chicken
Another easy chicken recipe?! Yes, we do need another one. Who can have too many yummy chicken recipes?
This recipe only has 8 ingredients and it’s *almost* a dump and go recipe, besides the step of sautéing some garlic. It’s also gluten free and keto-friendly, for those of you how care about that.
I like Instant Pot garlic butter chicken with moist and tender bites of chicken thighs. It’s a personal preference. However, I wrote notes in the recipe card if you’d rather try making it with chicken breasts.
I always find a big bag of frozen chicken thighs at Costco or Sam’s Club. I also have luck finding thighs at Winco. Other stores can be hit or miss.
What should I serve with Instant Pot garlic butter chicken? I served my chicken with Instant Pot Bacon Parmesan Smashed Potatoes (made in a separate Instant Pot) and steamed asparagus. You can also serve this chicken and sauce with rice, noodles or cauliflower rice.
More Instant Pot Chicken Recipes…
Instant Pot Chicken and Biscuits
Instant Pot Southern Sunday Chicken
Instant Pot No Time To Cook Chicken
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Instant Pot Garlic Butter Chicken
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes (plus 10 minute NPR)
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Description
Tender chicken bites coated in a garlic butter sauce. Only 8 ingredients and your Instant Pot make this recipe fast and easy!
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 2 Tbsp minced garlic
- 3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs (see note)
- 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 2–4 Tbsp cornstarch
Instructions
Instant Pot Instructions:
- Turn Instant Pot to sauté setting. Add in the butter and let it melt. Add in the garlic and sauté for 30 seconds. Turn off Instant Pot.
- Add chicken into Instant Pot. Add in Italian seasoning, salt and cayenne pepper. Toss well to coat chicken. Pour in broth.
- Cover Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 15 minutes for whole chicken thighs (frozen or fresh) or 5 minutes for chicken thigh chunks. When time is up let pot sit for 10 minutes and then move the valve to venting. Remove the lid.
- Place chicken on a platter.
- Thicken sauce with a cornstarch slurry. Turn your Instant Pot to the sauté setting. In a small bowl stir together 2-4 Tbsp of cornstarch with 4 Tbsp of water, until smooth. Then pour the mixture into the Instant Pot. The cornstarch mixture will thicken up contents of pot quickly.
- Serve chicken drizzled with sauce.
Slow Cooker Instructions:
- Add chicken, butter, garlic, Italian seasoning, salt and cayenne pepper into slow cooker. Toss to coat chicken with seasonings. Pour in the broth.
- Cover and cook on low for 4-6 hours.
- In a small bowl stir together 2-4 Tbsp of cornstarch with 4 Tbsp of water, until smooth. Then pour the mixture into the slow cooker. Turn slow cooker to high and cook with the lid off for 20-30 minutes, or until sauce has thickened.
- Serve chicken drizzled with sauce.
Notes
Chicken thighs: I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs for this recipe. One option is to serve them as whole pieces. Another idea is to cut each chicken thigh into 4-5 pieces. The cooking time will be shorter in this case. Each piece will be coated well with the sauce (more surface area for deliciousness to coat). You can use frozen thighs for this recipe. Keep the same cooking time. The pot will take longer to come to pressure.
Chicken breasts: Try making this with chicken breast bite-size chunks. Only pressure cook for 3 minutes with a 5 minute natural pressure release. For full chicken breasts cook for 15 minutes.
- Category: Chicken
- Method: Instant Pot or Slow Cooker
*Karen Petersen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
Was so EZ and so very delicious! Served over farro. I thought my husband was going to lick the bowl. And he asked for the left-overs to be served tomorrow night with some naan to dip with. I don’t think this is going to be the only time I make this one! HaHa
★★★★★
So glad he liked it! And the naan sounds fantastic.
This recipe was simple and fantastic. The whole family enjoyed. The cayenne was perfect for elevating the flavor without overly spicing up the dish. It was such an effective flavor enhancer that next time I may add slightly less salt.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe and for this site!
★★★★★
Thanks so much Ellie for the 5 stars!
If you don’t have corn-starch on hand, can you use flour instead?
Sure!
I love all your recipes! Thanks for sharing. On this Garlic Butter Chicken, could I cook pasta at the same time? If so, how much extra water/broth/liquid would I need for a cup of pasta. I really like cooking in one pot. I know I would have to cut up the meat into bite sized pieces so the pasta won’t overcook.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks again!
You could try it! for every 8 ounces of pasta I do 1 3/4 cups of liquid. And I would cook for 4 minutes with the cut up chicken bites.
I am cooking this tomorrow night. I will let you how it goes. Thanks for the quick reply
This was easy enough to make in a lunch hour while working remote. Had leftovers for the rest of the week, microwaves well. Will make again, probably often.
4 tbsp of cornstarch ended up being a bit much, but the resulting chicken jello was more entertaining than problematic (it returned to liquid form once microwaved).
★★★★★
Thanks! Good to know about the cornstarch!
I made this last night. My Husband & I loved it! For only the two of us, I cut the chicken to 1.5 lbs but used the other ingredients per recipe. However, I did cut the cayenne to 1/4 teaspoon. Being from Louisiana, I respect cayenne. You can always add additional if you want more heat. I used instant potato mix to thicken the sauce and served as gravy on mashed potatoes/chicken. It was outstanding! I’ll be sharing this recipe with others! Thanks Karen for your excellent recipes! I love 💕 365 website & cookbook!
★★★★★
Ahhh thanks Linda! I liked this line a lot, “Being from Louisiana, I respect cayenne.”
I made this tonight and the hubby is in love!! I used two frozen chicken breasts and then cut them afterwards. I put the chicken back in the sauce before I thickened it for a couple minutes & then took it out again so I could thicken the sauce. Absolutely an amazing meal!!
★★★★★
So glad you liked it! Thanks Terri for the nice review.
Made it tonight. Very easy, fast and delish! I used what I had, chicken strips. Excellent. I love my instant pot. It’s a wonderful machine. Thanks for the recipe, it’s a keeper.
Good idea on the chicken strips!
Thank you will be trying this….
You’re welcome!
If I wanted to use frozen chicken breasts (I never remember to thaw things!), would I also use the same time as for thawed (as noted for the frozen thighs)? This looks terrific and if I can try it without waiting for my chicken to thaw I’ll be very happy!
I went ahead and tried it with the same timing after comparing it against another recipe, and it worked great. Really tasty, and the sauce was good over some mashed potatoes on the side too!
★★★★★
Thank you I’m glad to know that it worked!
Yes that is what I would do!
Hi Karen– I love so many of your recipes, although I still do all of it in the slow cooker. After I found your website, I did purchase an Instant Pot. You’ll be happy to know that it is VERY SAFE in it’s box behind the sofa, and I doubt it has a single speck of dust on it as I’ve never even opened the box. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that in your slow cooker recipe for Garlic Butter Chicken, you have the reader putting everything in an Instant Pot….were you trying to trick me into using my Instant Pot? 🤣
★★★★★
Ha! Mary you’re post made me giggle! One day you should pull out your instant pot and give it a try, you might like it! 🙂
Hi Bonnie — Thanks for your response; I’m glad that someone saw the humor in my posting. We all need humor to get thru these crazy times! And I will definitely get out that Instant Pot and learn to cook with it one of these days. But if you hear about a huge explosion coming from a house in Albuquerque, New Mexico…..
😱
LOL Mary! This gave me a laugh too. I just corrected the recipe!
Lol.
Sorry! I missed that
No liquid?
It says 1 cup of chicken broth in the recipe..
It says one cup chicken broth
Yes. 1 cup chicken broth.