This was after putting it in the oven, under the broiler for a few minutes.
Ever since I got my instant pot, I’ve wondered if I could cook a whole chicken – yes, yes, I can!
It isn’t a recipe, really, you can season your chicken however you want to – but, I used a couple bay leaves, butter, salt, pepper and garlic powder on mine. My chicken was 6 pounds, give or take. I added 1.5 cups of water in the bottom of the instant pot insert, then placed the trivet in – finally adding the chicken and the seasonings.
I set the pot to ‘poultry’, high pressure and 1 hour. When it was done, I allowed it to do natural release.
The chicken was just pulling away from the bone!
I also ended up with a little over 5 cups of broth from the cooking process. This came in handy for me, since I was making chicken and dumplins from this!
To crisp up the skin, I put it in my oven, on broil for just a few minutes. I was actually just going to pull the chicken off and make dumplins, so that was totally unnecessary, but certainly a step worth taking to make your chicken ‘prettier’. You should probably also tie up the legs, as it gets VERY tender in the instant pot.
I can honestly say, I’ve never had a store bought rotisserie chicken that tasted any better. Looked better, yeah, my chicken isn’t winning any beauty contests – but I think it would hold it’s own in a taste contest!
I was looking for something easy to make tonight – and I knew I wanted to use chicken. So, I decided to make an easy chicken and rice casserole – that I could just throw together, put in the oven and forget about it (for the most part). Is it just me or should a casserole be comfort food? Maybe it is because I love casseroles, but I tend to associate them with comfort food. After a night of not sleeping well, and feeling poorly as a result of that, comfort food sounded just like what I needed.
Comfort food, at least in my house, tends to be creamy! And, what could make a casserole more creamy than Campbell’s ‘cream of whatever’ soup? For this recipe, I decided to use a cream of chicken and a cream of celery. To that, I added some celery, carrots and onion – to go with the rice and chicken.
As far as seasonings, I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika and umami seasoning.
For the chicken, I used my instant pot to cook it (in 1 cup of stock, which I also added to the casserole). I cooked 2 very large chicken breasts, from frozen in 20 minutes – and used my hand mixer to shred it. I’ve blogged about this before – and, I still stand by the fact that I’ll never do shredded chicken any other way!
I chose to make the casserole in my large dutch oven. Once all the vegetables were chopped and the chicken was shredded, I just dumped everything into the dutch oven.
And stirred… Yes, it is really that simple! Dump the ingredients and stir!
I then put the lid on, and put the dutch oven in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, I removed it from the oven, uncovered, topped with bread crumbs. You don’t want to add the bread crumbs until some of the liquid from the casserole have been absorbed – otherwise, it will just get mushy, instead of adding a little crispiness to the top of the casserole.
And back into the oven it went, uncovered – for another 20 minutes.
There are vegetables in the casserole, but if you want – you can serve alongside another vegetable or side. I had some field peas with mine.
Easy Chicken and Rice Casserole
2 – 3 large chicken breasts, cooked and shredded (along with stock from cooking the chicken breasts) 2 1/2 cups rice 1 can cream of chicken soup 1 can cream of celery (or mushroom) soup 2 1/2 ‘cans’ (using soup can to measure) chicken stock 1 stalk celery, chopped 2 carrots, chopped 1 onion, diced 1 tsp salt 1 tsp garlic powder 1/2 tsp pepper 3/4 tsp paprika 2 tsp Umami seasoning 2/3 cup panko bread crumbs
In a large dutch oven, mix all ingredients (yes, it is really that easy – dump it all in!)
Cover dutch oven and cook for 45 minutes, at 400 degrees
Uncover – top with Panko bread crumbs – and bake for another 20 minutes, uncovered
It is still 90+ degrees where I live, but I love soup – so, despite the heat tonight – it was a chicken noodle soup night. It started as soup – but, ended up pretty thick, so maybe it is more of a stew. Regardless – it was delicious!!
I started out with chicken, which I cooked in my instant pot (from frozen). PERFECTION! I decided to use both chicken breasts and thighs. I cooked them on the poultry setting, for 30 minutes, with 1 cup of chicken stock.
The truly brilliant thing about this chicken is how I shredded it. I’m not saying that I am brilliant (I saw this somewhere else), I’m saying that it worked brilliantly! Literally, less than a minute and 2 chicken breasts and 3 chicken thighs – perfectly shredded. How was is shredded, you ask?? With a hand mixer, in the instant pot!
From now, to the end of time, when I need shredded chicken – it will be cooked in the instant pot and shredded with a hand mixer!
I set the chicken aside and got busy getting my veggies (carrots, celery and onion) ready to go in my dutch oven. I just sliced and chopped the veggies to similar size and it was ready to go!
I added a small amount of oil in my dutch oven and cooked the veggies a little bit before I added the chicken broth. Only for maybe 5 minutes or so – just to seal in a little bit of flavor in the veggies!
Then I added my broth – brought the pot up to boil and cooked the vegetables for about 10 minutes. Next, I added in the shredded chicken, with any broth that was in the instant pot and brought it back up to a boil.
The final step was to add the noodles and allow them to cook through. For the pasta I used, that was about 8 minutes.
The only thing left was to enjoy this delicious soup!!
Chicken Noodle Soup approx time to make recipe, including prep: 1.5 hours
Shredded Chicken (see instructions below) 5-6 carrots, chopped 4-5 stalks of celery, chopped 1/2 onion, diced 8 cups of chicken broth 1 lb of pasta 1 tbsp garlic 1 tsp olive oil 1/2 tsp dried rosemary 1/2 tsp dried basil 1/2 tsp dried thyme salt to taste
Shredded chicken 1 cup of chicken broth 2 frozen chicken breasts 3 frozen chicken thighs Instant pot ** Add all items to instant pot and cook on poultry setting for 30 minutes. Quick release once instant pot finishes and shred with hand mixer
Chop vegetables
Add oil and vegetables to large pot or dutch oven – cook for about 5 minutes.
Add broth to pot, along with the seasonings, bring to boil and cook for 10 minutes.
Add shredded chicken to pot and bring back up to a boil
Michelle Can Cook! 