Instant Pot Smoky Mountain Barbecue Chicken

Instant Pot Smoky Mountain Barbecue Chicken–tender chicken with the most delicious homemade smoky barbecue sauce. It’s made fast and easy in your pressure cooker.

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Instant Pot Smoky Mountain Barbecue Chicken

This is a fun recipe where you make an amazing barbecue sauce at the same time as you cook the chicken. The barbecue sauce has lots of flavor and is definitely worth the small amount of work to grab out all the ingredients of your cabinets and fridge.

Try serving this chicken on sandwiches, plain, in tortillas, on salad or on homemade flatbread. Try doubling the recipe and freezing the leftovers in a ziploc bag for an easy meal another night. You can use most any cut of chicken you like too…boneless, bone-in, thighs, breasts, etc.

Ingredients/Substitution Ideas

• Chicken broth–or water and Better than Bouillon Chicken Base
• Chicken––boneless or bone-in chicken breasts or thighs, or a combination of breasts and thighs. I used 2 large chicken breasts. Thighs stay more tender and are easier to shred. Bone-in chicken breasts also stay tender.
• Brown sugar
• Yellow mustard–or dijon mustard
• Apple cider vinegar–or white vinegar
• Lemon juice
• Dehydrated onion–or 1 tsp onion powder
• Worcestershire sauce
• Ketchup–I like Heinz
• Liquid smoke–in the aisle with BBQ sauces
• Tabasco sauce
• Black pepper
• Kosher salt
• Cayenne pepper
• Cornstarch
• Butter

Steps

Add chicken broth and chicken into bottom of Instant Pot. Lightly salt and pepper the chicken.

In a pot-in-pot* dish whisk together the remaining ingredients (except butter) until smooth. Add the pat of butter into the dish.

Place a tall trivet* into the Instant Pot around the chicken.

Place the pot-in-pot dish on top of the tall trivet. 

Cover the Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 12 minutes for fresh chicken or 15 minutes for frozen chicken. When time is up let the pot sit for 8 minutes and then move valve to venting. Remove the lid.

Move the pot-in-pot dish out of the Instant Pot. Move chicken to a cutting board. Discard the broth. Shred or chop the chicken. Add the chicken into the Instant Pot. Scrape the sauce from the pot-in-pot dish into the chicken. Stir to coat the chicken.

Serve the chicken and enjoy!

Notes/Tips

• You can serve this chicken on top of buns, as sandwiches. You can also serve it it plain with a side of potatoes (like baked potatoes) and vegetables. Try serving it wrapped up in tortillas. Or on top of a salad (think bbq chicken salad).
• This recipe can be gluten-free if you use gluten-free Worcestershire sauce.
• I used my 6 quart Instant Pot*. You can also make this in an 8 quart pot.
• Store leftovers in an airtight container* in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
• Other recipes you can make with ketchup are Instant Pot Ultimate Cheeseburger Casserole and Instant Pot Boarding House Meatloaf Bites.

More Instant Pot Smoky Recipes

Did you know you can filter the recipes on my website to search by meat type, IP or Crockpot, low carb, gluten free, etc.? Use the filter to find exactly what you are looking for. 

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*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.