Instant Pot Honey Garlic Chicken is an easy chicken recipe that is filled with delicious flavors, tender pieces of chicken, and a yummy homemade honey garlic sauce, and is great for a quick dinner recipe.
This recipe is perfect for when you are in the mood for Chinese food, but don’t actually want to go out. It is made with simple ingredients that you will generally already have on hand or find easily in the store.
So, when you need a quick meal to make up for you and your family, make this pressure cooker chicken recipe in less than 30 minutes. Aka perfect for your busy weeknights ahead!
Recipe Ingredients:
- Chicken: use boneless, skinless chicken breasts or skinless chicken thighs if you prefer
- Seasonings: you will need salt and black pepper
- Honey: either use raw honey, local honey, or whatever you already have in your pantry already
- Sauces: you will also need ketchup and soy sauce to make the homemade honey garlic sauce
- Sugar: brown sugar or coconut sugar works well for this recipe
- Oil: we like to use vegetable oil, olive oil or canola oil
- Garlic: either fresh minced garlic or garlic from a jar
- Onion: use a fresh yellow onion diced
- Water
- Thickening agent: cornstarch is the best for thickening the savory sauce
- Toppings: sesame seeds and green onions are great optional garnishes
How to make Instant Pot Honey Garlic Chicken:
- Place chicken in the bottom of the Instant Pot and season with salt and pepper.
- In a small mixing bowl mix up the sauce ingredients, whisk together honey, ketchup, brown sugar, soy sauce, vegetable oil, garlic, and onion.
- Pour sauce over chicken in the Instant Pot.
- Place lid on the Instant Pot, close and set to sealing.
- Press the MANUAL button (or PRESSURE COOK) and set timer for 15 minutes on high pressure.
- Do a QUICK RELEASE of the pressure instead of a natural release and when the pin drops, remove the lid.
- Remove chicken from the Instant Pot and cut into bite-sized pieces; set aside.
- Whisk together water and cornstarch in a small bowl to make a cornstarch slurry and whisk the mixture of cornstarch with the sauce in the Instant Pot. Press the Saute function button for a cook time of 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
- When the sauce has thickened, fold in cooked chicken and turn off the Instant Pot.
- Serve over rice and garnish with sesame seeds and green onion.
Expert tips for making this Instant Pot honey garlic chicken recipe:
Why is my honey garlic sauce not thickening?
The sure way to have a runner sauce it to skip out on using cornstarch. Using the teaspoons of cornstarch is the way this recipe’s yummy sauce thickens up.
If you do not have any cornstarch on hand, all-purpose flour can be a good substitute to use. You can also let it simmer over medium high heat or the saute function to thicken it up a bit.
How to serve this easy Instant Pot recipe:
Serve this over white rice, jasmine rice, basmati rice, brown rice, or even cauliflower rice.
Some of our readers have added mixed vegetables with their rice for more added veggies. This is also delicious and served with steamed broccoli – great for keeping this a gluten-free recipe.
Is this recipe spicy?
As the recipe is written for this tender chicken recipe, no, it is not generally spicy. However, you can add some red pepper flakes or a little garlic chili sauce to the garlic honey sauce to make it a bit spicier.
Storage Instructions:
Fridge: Place the leftover Instant Pot chicken breasts in an airtight container and store it in the refrigerator for up to 5 days as well as the rice you might have served with this in a separate container. But it is best 3-4 days after making the Instant Pot version of this easy recipe.
Easy honey garlic chicken recipes:
- Spicy Honey Glazed Chicken
- Instant Pot Honey Sesame Chicken
- Instant Pot Sticky Chicken
- Sweet Honey Soy Chicken
- Baked Honey Chicken Tenders Recipe
Instant Pot Honey Garlic Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- salt and pepper, to taste
- ½ cup honey
- ⅓ cup ketchup
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ⅓ cup soy sauce
- 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
- ½ onion, diced
- ¼ cup water
- 1 ½ Tablespoons corn starch
- sesame seeds, optional garnish
- green onion, optional garnish
Instructions
- Place chicken in the bottom of the Instant Pot and season with salt and pepper.
- In a small mixing bowl, whisk together honey, ketchup, brown sugar, soy sauce, vegetable oil, garlic and onion.
- Pour sauce over chicken in the Instant Pot.
- Place lid on the Instant Pot, close and set to sealing.
- Press the MANUAL button (or PRESSURE COOK) and set timer for 15 minutes.
- Do a QUICK RELEASE of the pressure and when the pin drops, remove the lid.
- Remove chicken from the Instant Pot and cut into bite-sized pieces; set aside.
- Whisk together water and corn starch in a small bowl and whisk into the sauce in the Instant Pot. Press the Saute button and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
- When the sauce has thickened, fold in cooked chicken and turn off the Instant Pot.
- Serve over rice and garnish with sesame seeds and green onion.
Notes
Nutrition
Did You Make This Recipe?We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review or a question in the comment section below the post.
Could this recipe be tripled in an 8-Qt pot?
This was so yummy and super easy! I used frozen chicken breasts and increased the cook time by 5 minutes, and allowing it to release naturally for 5 minutes. We had it with brown rice and broccoli 🥦. I’ve never done pot-in-pot yet— do you think I could make this together with the rice, cooking the chicken or the rice in a separate container?
Thanks!
Can you use frozen chicken?
Yes, frozen chicken works too.
Can you use boneless, skinless thighs? If so, would the time increase or decrease? I’m really new on using my new instant pot and I get scared on the times lol
Very easy to prepare and cook. Also very tasty! Put peas and carrots in my brown rice to get some extra vegetables.
This recipe was really easy, and turned out wonderfully! I made this in a 10 qt instant pot, layered 10 Costco frozen chicken thighs and tripled the sauce (but next time I will only double the sauce, I think it would be plenty). I kept the cook time the same but did use natural release for 7 minutes, then released the rest of the pressure manually. Thank you to other commenters regarding the mess when releasing, I used a disposable bowl with a couple of paper towels in it and covered the spout loosely, it worked great for catching the glaze colored mist 😉 this recipe is definitely a keeper, even our 13 year old daughter asked me if we could make this recipe more often. We own all of your cookbooks, and I especially appreciate your instant pot recipe videos on YouTube, thanks for everything that you all do 🙂
Hi Christine. You totally made our whole week with this sweet comment. We love to hear how everyone changes up the recipes to their own taste and liking. We love extra sauce too, so bring on more sauce!! Thanks for coming to our site, buying our books, and watching our youtube videos. We hope that it helps with your Instant Pot cooking. Thanks again for taking the time to leave us a comment. Take care and stay safe! -The Sisters
I liked the recipe overall, but have to say, next time I’ll be cutting the brown sugar and/or honey in half, just because it was too sweet. I would recommend making it but with less of those ingredients in order to cut back on the cloying sweetness of the sauce. Maybe adding some chili sauce would be a good idea, too, if you want it a little more spicy. Overall, super quick and easy recipe. Also, I was worried the chicken and sauce on the bottom of the pot would give a food burn notice, but it didn’t, thankfully.
Thanks for the tip. I left out the brown sugar and added chili garlic sauce for a little savory heat. It was still sweet but not too sweet.
Dinner tonight got me a “wow mom you nailed it! This is beyond amazing!” And “Holy cow this tastes like it is from a restaurant!” I cut up the chicken before cooking and dropped the cook time to 15 min. Then I didn’t have to cut up hot meat 😉 we served it over basmati rice cooked at the same time in a second instant pot and it was all done at the same time. I cooked twice as much rice as I needed and turned half of it into a quick fried rice. Perfect quick weeknight meal!
Do I need to double the liquids if I’m doing 3 lbs of chicken ???
If you are doubling the chicken amount, you will definitely need to double the other ingredient amounts.
We loved this recipe! My picky 6-year old ate it and husband went back for seconds 👏 The sweetness didn’t bother us.
I made this yesterday and the flavor was amazing! I used about 1.2 lbs and thought it was a little too much sauce so I will probably remove some after cooking to freeze, just so the chicken isn’t drowning.
My family loved this so much. We cook a lot of asian dishes and this paired very well with roasted broccoli, carrots and quinoa. Saving this for sure.
I loved this recipe!
So easy and delicious!
I loved this recipe so much! It was easy to make and my entire family loved it, even the picky eaters.