Instant Pot BBQ Chicken Recipe With Chicken Breasts Or Thighs (2024)

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This Instant Pot BBQ chicken recipe is so simple and so finger-lickin’ good! This is going to become your favorite weeknight meal ever!

Got chicken breasts or thighs? Got BBQ sauce? That’s all you need to make this easiest BBQ chicken recipe ever! We are cooking this chicken in the Instant Pot pressure cooker, then chopping it up and mixing with barbecue sauce – yum!

Don’t have Instant Pot? No worries! You can cook chicken by any other method – on the frying pan, in the oven or making poached chicken in a pot of water. It doesn’t really matter how you cook the chicken, but Instant Pot is the quickest and easiest way to accomplish it!

Cooking the chicken in the Instant Pot is really easy. Just put a package of chicken breasts or thighs in the Instant Pot, add a cup of water, press the Manual or Pressure Cook button and cook on High pressure for 8 minutes for chicken breasts (or 13 minutes for chicken thighs). Allow the pressure to release naturally for 5 minutes, then quick release (QR) the remaining pressure. The chicken is cooked!

If you want to cook chicken from frozen, you surely can! Follow my instructions for Instant Pot frozen chicken breasts to cook them from frozen to perfection! Add an extra 5 minutes of cooking time for chicken thighs.

So once you cook the chicken, take it out of the Instant Pot and cut cooked chicken into pieces. Return chicken pieces to the Instant Pot, squeeze a BBQ sauce over the chicken and mix.

Turn the Instant Pot on Saute method and cook, stirring, for 1 minute, or until the BBQ sauce is hot. Dinner is ready!

Look at that yummy yum yum BBQ chicken! It’s a 2-ingredient dinner that is ready in 15 minutes! So delicious and so simple!

The chopped BBQ chicken on this picture is served over brown rice that I also cooked in the Instant Pot earlier :) Check out my recipe for Instant Pot Brown Rice.

If you like this simple Instant Pot BBQ Chicken, you will also love these easy recipes:

Homemade BBQ Sauce Recipe – this homemade barbecue sauce recipe is so easy to make and tastes so much better than store-bought! Using this amazing sauce will take your BBQ chicken to the whole new level!

BBQ Chicken Grilled Cheese – two of my favorites (BBQ chicken and grilled cheese) combined into one epic dish! That’s a true comfort food!

Instant Pot Apple Sauce – making homemade apple sauce in the Instant Pot takes just 5 minutes and you don’t even need to peel the apples!

Instant Pot Chicken Drumsticks – the easiest recipe ever to make with chicken legs in the Instant Pot, it even cooks them directly from frozen!