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.
Great recipe! I went searching for an instant pot frozen chicken and rice recipe (an hour before dinner time!) and was so thankful to find this! I was in a hurry to take my kids outside to play before dinner so I just used what we had on hand: 2 cups arborio rice, two and a half cups water with a packet of beef bone broth. Otherwise followed the instructions and when we came inside for dinner, it was done! Magic! Perfect rice, chicken was done and shredded easily! I let my kids add sauce/seasonings they wanted. Thank you! I’ll use this a million more times and try various flavors!
Happy to hear it, Ariel!
Not sure what all the negative comments are about – halved the recipe as written, used Costco thin sliced chicken breasts, and it came out terrific. Super quick to make and chicken, rice, and carrots were all perfectly cooked, very flavorful, and very filling. Will definitely be making this a lot during the colder months!
Love this recipe! I tried with frozen boneless/skinless chicken breast. I didn’t have carrots so skipped that. I sautéed in the instant pot olive oil, 1/4 of a sweet onion, and minced garlic. Then added a handful of fresh chopped cilantro, rice, vegetable broth (ran out of chicken broth), sea salt, pepper, chicken, and dried Italian seasoning. I let it sit longer after the 9 mins was done (multi-tasking), about 22 minutes extra on warm setting. The rice was amazing! The chicken was not tender and needed salt and some other seasoning as the broth did not help season the chicken like I hoped. I will be making this again but with thawed chicken seasoned well before adding to the top of the rice and hopefully will have carrots on hand. It’s a great base recipe to make your own!
I went with 1C rice, 1C water, 1/2 coconut milk, a frozen chicken breast and some frozen peppers and onions.
Turned out fantastic!
Thank you for sharing your adjustments, Josh!
I came across this website and tried the Chicken Breast on rice and carrot.
It is a success. I used a 3-qt instant pot. 3/4 cup of rice, 3/4 cup of water, chicken thighs (half defrost), carrot. It turned out very nice, but a little burn in the bottom, will add olive oil first next time. Not the fluffy kind of rice, will use less water next time. I use water because I would like to see how it tastes without chicken broth. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing your results with us!
Worked like a charm, thanks very much for this, we really enjoyed it!
Skipped the rice but the carrots and chicken came out perfect, easy, mess free and simple. We’re big fans. Worked great with the chicken thighs we used. first time using the pressure cooker so I was amazed by how pleasant the whole thing was.
You’re welcome, M! The Instant Pot is great for all sorts of cooking, enjoy.
Turned up pretty good but got burnt good notice. How do I avoid that in future?
I made this tonight for dinner and it was a HIT! It was SO easy to make. I sautéed onions and garlic in some olive oil before adding the rest of the ingredients. I did 2.5 cups of broth. When the food was done cooking, I diced the chicken and mixed it back into the rice. I didn’t have carrots, so I steamed broccoli and we had that on the side. Such a yummy recipe that will definitely be added into our dinner rotation. Also, did I mention it was SO FREAKING EASY and fast!?!?
Thank you, Bekah! Love having easy and delicious meals on rotation!
Cooking is my nemesis. I have trouble with all parts of recipes, timing, what did I add, what did I forget! This was a great success. Added olive oil to the bottom of pot before the rice. Prepared following other directions. Grilled onions in a side pan and squeezed fresh lemon for topping if chosen. Thank you so much for making the end of my day a better experience.
It sounds like you did an amazing job cooking, Kathy! I’m thrilled this recipe helped you out and thank you so much for sharing your experience with it.
Mine burned
Can I use frozen rice for this recipe? Would cooking time need to be adjusted?
Okay, So I was looking for a frozen mexican chicken and rice recipe for instant pot and couldnt find one. I found this and did everything the same except added a box of spanish rice and used my own taco seasoning for the chicken and WOW the chicken fell a part and the rice was perfect! I will be using this for all my go to chicken instant pot recipes! Thank you so much!
That sounds amazing, Charity! Thank you for sharing your version of this recipe. :)
I used my 12qt instant pot and tripled the recipe as meal prep for the week. It turned out perfectly. Not sure what everyone else’s issue was. Thanks for the super easy pantry meal that will feed me for the week.
I’m so so so happy that it worked for you. This recipe has been such a crazy one! Thank you for letting me know what you did and how it turned out.
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.
That does sound like it likely happened because there wasn’t enough liquid for the amount of rice. Sorry about that, Tabitha!
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.
Thank you for sharing what worked for you, Florence! I’m glad you enjoyed.
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?
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.
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!
Thanks for sharing your results, Courtney!