Quick and easy instant pot peanut butter chicken recipe, homemade with simple ingredients in 30 minutes. Loaded with creamy, nutty, sweet, and spicy sauce.
This has lately been my favorite meal. It's so flavorful and great for peanut lovers.
How to make peanut butter chicken (peanut sauce chicken)?
- Heat oil in Instant pot.
- Add chicken, broth, peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, Sriracha sauce, honey, garlic powder, ginger powder, red chili flakes, salt, and pepper.
- Cover and cook.
- Release pressure.
- Stir.
- Garnish with chopped green onions, and peanuts.
- Enjoy!
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What sides to serve with Thai/ Chinese peanut butter chicken recipe?
Rice- With any chicken dish, rice always serves as a complimentary side dish that is simple yet filling, and allows you to fully taste the flavors of the peanut butter chicken without having any other flavor overpower each other. You can serve boiled jasmine/basmati rice, or even Pineapple Rice and Cilantro Lime Rice. However, I would not recommend stir fried rice with this recipe because the flavors will not complement each other.
Quinoa- If you want to make this dish healthier, you can also substitute the rice with quinoa
Roasted vegetables- Roasted vegetables are always a classic for side dishes with chicken. Here are some of my favorite ones enjoyed by my family and I, but you can obviously use vegetable choices that you and your family love: Oven Roasted Carrots, and Oven Roasted Asparagus.
Salads- The best choice for a salad side dish would be a traditional green salad.
Noodles- You can pair this with your favorite noodles, or even zoodles! (zucchini noodles)
Spaghetti Squash- If you're looking for another low carb choice for a side dish, you can always make spaghetti squash in the instant pot for a quick side.
crockpot/ slow cooker, curry, sticky, make it on stovetop as chicken stir fry.
Variations
Use different nut butters and nuts- Feel free to always add your own blend to this dish! You can use any choice of your favorite nut butters, or even nuts! For instance, if you want to make this dish a bit more sweet, you can always substitute the peanuts with honey-roasted peanuts. If you want to use a healthier choice of peanut butter, you can always use a low fat peanut butter. Give almond butter a shot!
Make it spicy- Despite the sweet, peanut butter flavor of this dish, you can always more spice to it by adding in more amounts of sriracha hot sauce, adding chili peppers, or even sprinkling some red chili powder on top!
Frozen vegetables- mix in 1 cup frozen vegetables to make this meal even more hearty.
Use other sources of protein- You can always substitute the chicken for other sources of protein. You can always serve this recipe with beef, shrimp, or any other protein food that you prefer!
Add sesame seeds- You can always add an extra dose of crunch by sprinkling some sesame seeds on top of the chicken.
What cut of chicken to use?- You can always use different parts of a chicken to make this dish more enjoyable for you and your family. Whether they be drumsticks, thighs, breast, or even the wings, they all will work well. The wings will also serve as an excellent appetizer. You can either coat the chicken slices in peanut butter chicken sauce, or marinade. (Note that you can serve the chicken both baked and/or fried!)
Use tofu- If you would like to create a vegetarian meal, you can always substitute the chicken with tofu, however, do not pair the two ingredients together.
Tips and Techniques
Use low sodium broth and unsalted butter- Both of these ingredients combined make the recipe less salty.
What cut of chicken to use?- If you use chicken breasts, you can cut them into 1 inch cubes. Otherwise, you can use the thighs, drumsticks, and whole.
Adjust the sweetness- adjusting the sweetness can be done to your taste. You can either add more peanut butter, or more honey to further intensify the sweetness.
Finely chopped garnishes- there are a number of different garnishes you can add to this dish. You can either sprinkle some of your favorite nuts on top, seeds, or even garnish with some cilantro, green onions, or parsley.
Use both sesame oil and olive oil- Using these together will give the best overall flavor of the dish.
Serving sizes- Whether it's a dinner for two, a family dinner, or a banquet, this recipe is extremely accommodating to different sizes that you wish to serve. Double the recipe to serve a crowd.
More One Pot Chicken Recipes
- Sweet and Spicy Chicken (One Pot)
- Honey Sesame Chicken (One Pot)
- Black Pepper Chicken (One Pot)
- Thai Peanut Noodles (One Pot)
Recipe
Instant Pot Peanut Butter Chicken
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Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon Olive oil
- 1 tablespoon Sesame oil
- 2 pounds Chicken breast Cut into small cubes
- 1 cup Chicken broth Low sodium
- ¼ cup Peanut butter Unsweetened
- ¼ cup Soy sauce Low sodium
- 1 tablespoon Vinegar
- 1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce
- 2-3 tablespoon Honey
- 2 teaspoon Garlic powder
- 2 teaspoon Ginger powder
- ½ teaspoon Red chili flakes Optional
- Salt To taste
- Pepper To taste
- 2 tablespoon Green onions Finely chopped, For garnish
- 1-2 tablespoon Peanuts Roasted, Roughly chopped, For garnish
Instructions
- Turn Instant pot to “Saute”mode and heat oil.
- Add chicken, broth, peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, Sriracha sauce, honey, garlic powder, ginger powder, red chili flakes, salt, pepper and mix everything together.
- Put the lid on and turn up the the valve to “Sealing.” Select “Manual” mode and set the timer for 9 minutes.
- When the cook time is over, turn the valve to “Venting” and do a quick pressure release.
- Remove lid and stir everything together.
- Cook, uncovered, on “Saute” mode for a little longer, to reduce liquid and make the sauce thicker.
- Garnish with green onions and chopped peanuts. Enjoy!
Notes
- Read all my tips above.
- Leftovers can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Nutrition
An automated tool is used to calculate the nutritional information. As such, I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the nutritional information provided for any recipe on this site.
Happy cooking everyone!
Melisse70 says
Cooking this recipe for tonight
Abeer Rizvi says
I hope you like it.
Blue says
Is this pressure cooked for 9 min or just sauté mode with the lid on?
Im using the Ninja Foodi i may just fine a stovetop recipe but I’ll regret it in this heat
Abeer Rizvi says
I used an Instant pot and it was pressure cooked for 9 minutes. It was not on the Sauté mode. I am not sure if any adjustments are needed for your brand of pressure cooker. Let me know how it goes.
Kristin wangberg says
Delicious! Even my picky kids love it. Chicken taste and all is cooked to perfection.
EBYJAX911 says
This was great - Kids even liked it. Prepared it in an 8-quart IP according to the recipe verbatim, except I didn't have ground ginger (I did add some red pepper flake). Also, I'm not exactly sure how much chicken I used as was it was three chicken breasts I had leftover from one of those BIG packs that Sam's Club sells - so probably close to 3#, but there was still plenty of sauce. At the end, I also added about 2 Tbsp cornstarch slurry (water/cornstarch) to thicken the sauce some as putting it on 'saute' after cooking didn't do much except burn some of the sauce to the side of the pot - lol. Served it over rice and topped it with chopped celery leaves and crushed (roasted-unsalted) peanuts. Served with aside of Normandy vegetables. Great recipe - will make again!
SusanMcDavit says
You say use butter and oil but o see no butter listed other than peanut butter
Abeer Rizvi says
Sorry. That was a typo. I meant, use both oils- olive oil and sesame oil.
Christine says
Do you brown the chicken in the oil on the saute mode first and then add the rest of the ingredients? And then cook on high pressure for the 9 minutes?
Abeer Rizvi says
Typically, I do that for my other chicken recipes but for this one, I don't brown the chicken first. That extra step was just not needed.
Sharon Thompson says
I was wondering if you could do a pot in pot and make some rice at the same time? Or would the time have to be changed too much? Um using either Jasmine or Basmati rice.
Abeer Rizvi says
I have not tried that to know how the timing would be affected.
Crystal says
The recipe says to put on Sauté mode, but your comments say that’s not what you did. Can you clarify if you use the pressure cook setting or the sauté setting to cook the chicken?
Looks delicious and I’m looking forward to trying this!
Abeer Rizvi says
You start off on the Saute mode when you mix everything and then cover and pressure cook on the Manual mode.
Jay says
I love the flavor of this recipe! The only problem is that my chicken comes out rubbery. I follow the cooking times outlined in the recipe, and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Even with the rubbery chicken, I continue to make it.
Abeer Rizvi says
Hi Jay! Yikes. Rubbery chicken is usually a result of over-cooking. I suggest reducing your cook time. Use a meat thermometer at the end to make sure that the internal temperature of meat is 165˚F. Let me know how it goes.
Heather says
I've been looking for different chicken recipes to broaden my taste buds as I'm kind of tired of having some of the same things over and over again (even though I've liked the recipes). I like the crunchy peanut butter and that's the only kind I have on hand. Have you (or anyone else) try it with that type? I'm really interested in trying this and keeping this one on my list to try (and hoping to do so this weekend).
Abeer Rizvi says
If you like the crunchy texture, there is no problem is using crunchy peanut butter.