This instant chicken cacciatore recipe is my twist on a classic Italian dish for the best dinner of the night of the week. Tender and juicy chicken stewed in a delicious sauce and served over pasta or rice… Is there anything better than that?
When I was growing up, we ate a lot of chicken cacciatore. My mom alternated between serving us this delicious dish and serving chicken marengo. And although the dishes are similar, I definitely have a longing for each of them for different reasons.
The difference between the two is: this instant chicken cacciatore has a hint of sherry and the marengo chicken has a good dose of (usually) red wine.
I love the simplicity of the instant chicken cacciatore. If I had done this on the stove, it would have taken more than an hour. I love you, IP.
My mom also loved her pressure cooker, but I didn’t think much about it. Now that I’ve used one, I’m hooked and trying to find more recipes to make in it.
When my mom used to make pressure cooker chicken cacciatore, we used to gobble it up with smiles on our faces.
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Ingredients and substitutions
Olive Oil –
- I always use extra virgin olive oil because of the spicy and delicious taste
- Onion – I use Vidalia onions because I love the slightly sweet taste, but if you prefer to use a yellow onion, that’s fine.
- Peppers – I use two different colors: green and red. Red gives it a slightly sweet taste and green pepper is more conventional.
- Mushrooms – I enjoy the baby portobellos in this recipe, but the white mushrooms are fine too.
- – I used organic free-range chicken thighs with skin and bones for this recipe, but you can use boneless, skinless thighs if you prefer.
- Crushed tomatoes – I use a 28-ounce can.
- Chicken Broth – I enjoy Trader Joe’s organic free-range broth.
- Dry Sherry – Feel free to skip this, although it flavors the sauce quite well. Skip this if you’re doing Whole30.
- Herbs – I use dried organic oregano and basil.
- Bay leaf – Always a great addition to tomato sauce.
- Salt – I use fine-grained sea salt.
- Pepper – Use as much as you want. I can’t because my husband is sensitive to that.
- Garlic paste – I love this pasta because it’s quick, easy and honestly, no one knows the difference. The only thing that can be noticeable about this garlic paste and cloves is that there are no noticeable bits of garlic floating around. If you like to cut garlic, a teaspoon of garlic paste = a clove of garlic.
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Chicken thighs
Useful tips
I have made this recipe with chicken
- thighs that have intact skin and bones and with boneless skinless chicken thighs. It’s delicious both ways.
- If you use boneless and skinless, there is no need to brown them. It will also change the pressure cooking time to 10 minutes.
- This recipe can be made without dry sherry, but it’s so tasty, I say try it like this first.
- The thighs I used were huge, so I decided to brown them out of the instant pot, mainly because I wanted the skin to stay together and sometimes that doesn’t happen when you’re skipping into the deep IP insert. But if you don’t want to use another pan and don’t mind tearing the skin, sauté the chicken on the IP.
- also don’t usually skip vegetables when I use the IP, but I chose to do it because I wanted them to shrink a bit since the thighs were very big and I didn’t want to overfill the instant pot.
- Some people prefer chicken breasts more than thighs, wear what you prefer.
I
How to Make Easy Instant
Pot Chicken Cacciatore
Pre-step
Get your instant pot and a sautéing pan if you’re going to sauté the chicken out of the pressure cooker, like I did
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Step One
Gather the red pepper, green pepper,
onion and mushrooms. Step
two
Chop the onion and peppers into pieces and cut the mushrooms.
Step three
Open the can of crushed tomatoes and pick the herbs, bay leaf, salt, pepper, chicken broth and sherry. (You don’t need to put the herbs in the can, I just did it for the photo.)
Step four
Sauté the chicken thighs in the pressure cooker with 1 tablespoon of olive oil or do what I do and heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil and once it warms up, add the chicken skin down and sauté for 3 minutes. Flip and sauté for 1 more minute.
Take the chicken out of the pan and set aside. (A)
Step Five
Plug in the instant pot and press the stir-fry button. When heated, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and once it is heated, add the onion and peppers and let them sauté for 3 minutes. Add the sliced mushrooms, garlic paste, salt and pepper and sauté for another minute. (B)
Step six
Place the chicken on top of the vegetables. (C)
Step seven
Add crushed tomatoes, herbs, bay leaf and garlic paste. (D)
Step eight
Place the lid on the instant pot and make sure the vent knob is in the sealed position. Press the manual snap cook button, make sure it is set to high pressure, and set the timer for 13 minutes.
Note for time: The IP takes 10-15 minutes to exert pressure before starting to count the 13 minutes.
Step nine
Once the cacciatore is ready, wait 15 to 25 minutes for the pressure to release naturally or put on a furnace glove and after 5 minutes, carefully vent the pressure by hitting the vent knob until the steam stops leaking and the float valve drops
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Transfer the chicken to your serving plate. I use my Dutch oven.
Not seeing that exceptional sauce? I put some pasta on a plate and add the instant chicken cacciatore right on top.
Look at all those thick vegetables!
Now for the top view
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and thighs” />I
hope you enjoy this instant cacciatore chicken recipe as much as Christopher and I do.
Other popular chicken recipes
- Saltimbocca Sautéed
- Maple mustard
- Coq au Vin
- Air fryer thighs By
Please feel free to leave me a comment
!
And as always, make all your dishes delicious!
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Originally published May 2018.
