In less than 30 minutes, you can have an entire meal with tender chicken breasts, creamy risotto-like rice, and sweet carrots thanks to the Instant Pot.
How many times have you reminded yourself to take the chicken out of the freezer only to discover that, after you started doing 10 other things, you totally forgot? For me, more often than I’d like to admit.
I have written about cooking chicken from frozen in a post aptly named How to Cook Chicken Breasts from Frozen and one for Chicken Parmesan Using Frozen Chicken Breasts. Both of these recipes use the oven. The cooking times are based upon information from the USDA. Basically, it says you need to add about 50 percent more cooking time.
So, when I’m crunched for time and need to get a meal on the table in less than 30 minutes, I turn to frozen chicken breasts. And to make it even quicker, I put those frozen chicken breasts into the Instant Pot!
Making Chicken With Rice And Carrots In The Instant Pot
If you want to just cook plain frozen chicken breasts, head over here for the info. This is ideal for meal prep or for when you want plain chicken quickly.
If you want a full meal that starts with frozen chicken breasts, then turn to the recipe below. It uses frozen chicken breasts, uncooked rice, and uncooked carrots. That all goes into the Instant Pot and then blammo, you have a delicious one-pot dinner.
There is no fussing with multiple settings. All of the ingredients go in at the same time, you lock the lid in place, turn the vent to seal, and set the time. In the time it takes to round up the kids and set them to the task of setting the table, dinner is ready to be served. Supper saved!
Please read the notes in the recipe card, as some people have struggled with this recipe and others rave about it.
More Instant Pot Chicken Recipes
More Chicken Dinner Recipes
Instant Pot or not, I turn to chicken for quick weeknight dinners all.the.time. I’m linking to some of my favorite easy chicken dinners below, but be sure to also have a browse through all of my chicken recipes here (there are over 100 of them!).
- Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken Pasta
- One-Dish Italian Chicken and Cauliflower
- Chicken Pasta Bake With Creamy Alfredo Sauce
- Salsa Chicken
- Air Fryer Chicken Fajitas
Podcast Episode About Making Instant Pot Chicken Breasts From Frozen
Listen to me explain briefly about how to make this chicken dinner, along with some other great tips, by clicking the play button below:
Listen to more Recipe of the Day episodes here.
Print
Instant Pot Meal – Chicken Breasts from Frozen with Rice & Carrots
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
- Category: Entrée
- Method: Instant Pot
- Cuisine: American
DESCRIPTION
IMPORTANT: This recipe has VERY mixed reviews in the comment section below. For that reason, I took the recipe down and retested it twice. It worked perfectly both times. While the recipe was down, I got the following in an email, “Hi there, I used a recipe off of your website last week in my new instant pot. I saved the link because my family liked it so much! However, I went back to make it tonight and the link no longer works. :-( Can you tell me where I can find a post of your “Frozen Chicken breast, rice and carrots” instant pot recipe?”
I do not doubt the negative reviews that this recipe has received at all. But given my own success with this recipe, and that email, and some other positive feedback, I have decided to republish the recipe. I’ll also tell you more about how I made it:
- My instant pot is an 8 quart one, this one.
- I used chicken breasts that were 6-8 ounces each. Larger chicken breasts might throw off the recipe. I’ve updated the recipe to reflect this.
- My chicken breasts are individually frozen, meaning that they were not frozen in a big clump. I either buy them already individually frozen or I bring fresh chicken breasts home and freeze them in a single non-touching layer on a cookie sheet before transferring them to a freezer bag. I’ve updated the recipe to reflect this.
- I have now tried this recipe both with rinsed and non-rinsed rice. This doesn’t seem to affect burning or sticking. There was a little bit of sticking with both versions. The latter resulted in a wetter finished rice. Either way, the rice was creamy and soft, like risotto almost. I’ve left the rice unrinsed in the recipe.
- Note that many commenters have said that they used an extra 1/2 cup of chicken broth (so 2 and 1/2 cups instead of 2 cups). I haven’t yet tried this but the comments seem to be positive.
I’m truly sorry to those of you for whom this recipe has failed. I’m afraid to recommend that anyone else try it at this point. But if you’re brave and do, please leave a comment below letting us all know how it went. Good luck!
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/4 cups long grain white rice
- 2 cups unsalted chicken broth
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. pepper
- 4 (6-8 oz. each) individually-frozen, boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 2 tsp. Italian herb blend, or your favorite dried herb blend
- 5 –6 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1-in. pieces
Instructions
- Measure rice into bottom of the Instant Pot.
- Add chicken broth and salt and pepper, stir to combine.
- Lay the frozen chicken breasts on top of the rice. Season the chicken breasts with the Italian herb blend or your favorite herb blend.
- Lay carrots on top of the rice.
- Cover pot, lock on the lid, and set the steam release valve to Sealing
- Select Pressure Cook and make sure it’s set to high. Set the time to 9 minutes.
- When the cooking cycle has finished, allow the pot to sit for 5 minutes, and then do a quick release by moving the valve to Venting.
Notes
You can make this recipe with fresh chicken breasts as well. Set the cooking time to 7 minutes. Allow the pot to sit for 5 minutes, and then do a quick release by moving the valve to Venting.
This recipe was originally published in July 2018 and was updated in October 2019.
Tabitha says
Just tried this for dinner, although I misread the amount of rice and put in 1-1/2 cups. We got a food burn notice. Not sure if it was due to the fact I had an extra 1/4 cup of rice. I used three flash frozen chicken breast from Costco and I have no idea the individual weight. I tossing the chicken (~120 degrees) and softening carrots into a pot to salvage the dinner. I’m scraping the rice out right now and there’s some scorched onto the bottom. Is this maybe because I had too much rice for the amount of water? Any suggestions on how to not have the rice stick? Thankfully my 3 year old is still napping (yikes for bedtime) and my 1 year old twins are chipper, so I’m not too worried about dinner being really late and I will definitely try this recipe again to see if I can get it right.
Christine Pittman says
That does sound like it likely happened because there wasn’t enough liquid for the amount of rice. Sorry about that, Tabitha!
Florence Montague says
Hi Christine, your recipe was exactly what I was looking for as I was busy and needed something easy to make. Because of what you said about some of your reviews, I decided not to read them and I normally do read all the reviews before I make something. Let me tell you what I did. Chicken was on sale at our local grocery store, in food saver bags I put one large chicken breast and two thighs, all bone in and skin on. I think it was long grain rice, I also picked it up at the grocery store out of the bulk bin but wasn’t marked. I had a baby carrots and I use 1/2 the bag. After it was all done, I pulled the skin off the chicken. I took a can of Campbell’s mushroom with garlic soup, 1 cup water, 1 t chicken bullion, mixed it all together, and poured it over the chicken and rice. My husband loved it, I loved it. Great recipe, will definitely make again. Remember unfortunately some people are just going to hate.
★★★★★
Christine Pittman says
Thank you for sharing what worked for you, Florence! I’m glad you enjoyed.
Kristen says
I’ve made this numerous times and it’s always turned out great. I only have fresh chicken now, so I’m wondering how that might affect the recipe?
Christine Pittman says
Kristen, I actually think it will work with the exact same times. The chicken might be slightly more well-done. The other thing you can try is this. Rice only takes 6 minutes of pressure-cooking, and chicken breasts can often be done in that amount of time. So, set the pressure cooker to pressure cook on high for 6 minutes. Do a 5 minute natural release, then turn the valve to venting and release the rest of the pressure. Check on everything in there. If the rice isn’t yet soft (but it should be) or if the chicken is at all pink inside, put the lid back on and make sure the Keep Warm Setting is on. Let it sit for 3-5 minutes like that and then check it again.
Courtney says
I loved it. I messed up because we had two very different size breasts and I shredded them and saw raw in the one and then needed to cook it another 5 minutes. Added some more broth and it was no big deal. I also added lentils for extra protein for me. I eyeballed it so just took some rice out and added some lentils. My hubby really liked it and was like we need to add this to the rotation. He wants broccoli added next time too so I’ll try that. But it was super easy to make and yummy!
★★★★★
Christine Pittman says
Thanks for sharing your results, Courtney!