Instant Pot chicken rice soup with frozen, fresh or leftover rotisserie chicken is an easy healthy low fat comfort food everyone loves for dinner. Filled with wild rice, carrots, mushrooms and carrots you can now make this meal in under 30 minutes!
If you too are obsessed with chicken rice soup, let me show you how to make it at home in no time flat. It is just like the one at Panera we love but a lot cheaper. Your family won’t know the difference when you serve them this. Just one of our favorite Instant Pot recipes we make year round.
We made this pressure cooker chicken and rice dish years ago. It was such a hit we kept going from there. I would say that this is a tweak from that one but without condensed soup, just broth and more of it so it’s soupy (but you can serve it as dinner, not just a side dish).
In our experimenting I once used shredded rotisserie chicken, and another time diced up some leftover chicken and it worked amazing too! What does that mean? Well…..you have a bunch of possibilities so you have no excuse to not start this week.
It doesn’t matter what brand of machine you have either. We don’t have just one but many and have a few ourselves. You can make it as an easy Ninja Foodi recipes, in a Crockpot Express or any other brand too.
How long does chicken and rice soup take to cook?
If you do want to use raw meat that is fine, it will take 30 minutes in a pressure cooker, a bit longer on the stove. You also will have an extra step of shredding it at the end so you would need to account for that too. With precooked or rotisserie chicken, decrease the cook time from 30 to 25 minutes. The Ninja Foodi wild rice still needs plenty of time to get tender so keep that in mind.
Ingredient Notes
For the necessary liquid I prefer some Chicken broth vs. water as the latter will offer zero flavor as you could imagine. You could use stock and/or low sodium if need be.
As for the vegetables I add I like to add it all but the best ones are; Carrots, some diced Celery, slices of white Onions and slices or halved baby bella mushrooms will hold up better and not fall apart under high pressure.
As expected you want some Wild rice, I have not tried this with brown rice because the other holds up better. Note: I do not change the cook time much even if using precooked meat because these grains take a while to get tender.
You could skip out on the Garlic but why??? It adds so much flavor to every dish and is great for your health so it is a huge win win of an ingredient.
Boneless skinless chicken breasts, medium sized are best. If you use bone-in that is fine but you will need to fish the bones out before serving. I have made this with diced leftover thighs too (and rotisserie) and that worked great too.
Made with Frozen Chicken
If your pieces are frozen, small sized, boneless and skinless you will use the same cook time as fresh meat!! Make sure they are separated from one another first though or it won’t be successful. You can do this under cold water pulled apart. OR follow directions in our Frozen Chicken in the Instant Pot post, dice and then follow directions below.
Can You Use White Rice?
I would not use white rice like we do to make Ninja Foodi rice unless you use diced already cooked meat. In this case it would be successful with the same ingredients (using white vs. wild) with the cook time being adjusted to 12 minutes for long grain or arborio rice with a natural release at the end.
How Do you Make This Creamy?
If you wanted it to be creamy and thicker you could add 1 cup of heavy whipping cream with 1 tbsp of cornstarch whisked in that at the end. When done cooking set to saute, when bubbling pour this mixture in for a few minutes for a creamier comfort food texture.
Tips for Success
You could load in the veggies but slice them thick. After a thirty minutes on high pressure they’ll disintegrate if you don’t make them pretty big. Onions are a given for me with just about any dish so I always add those. Others should be on the firmer side meaning a bag of baby carrots is great or you could add quartered petite potatoes.
You will need to naturally release, not quick release the steam when the cook time is up but after about 15 minutes it will be done. Then you’ll want to take the lid off so it doesn’t sit and continue to soften much longer than that.
Should rice be cooked before adding to soup?
Not with this or our Instant Pot cabbage soup either. That is the beauty of pressure cooking, well just one of them. You just throw it in and submerge into the hot liquid, allow to bubble and it will cook right in there!
Instant Pot Chicken Rice Soup Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 medium chicken breasts, boneless skinless cut into large chunks, if using frozen separate pieces and use small boneless skinless pieces
- 1/2 small onion, chopped
- 3 stalks celery, cut into chunks
- 1 cup carrots, dials
- 1 cup mushrooms, halved or sliced
- 1 cup wild rice, uncooked
- 1 tsp thyme, dried
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 4 cup chicken broth
- 1 cup water
- 1 pinch salt, to taste
Instructions
- Turn pot to saute and add olive oil.
- Add chopped onions, celery, carrots and minced garlic. Cook until these start to soften, then turn pot off.
- Add mushrooms, thyme, wild rice, with chicken pieces on top sprinkled with salt and pepper. Then pour broth and water over it all.
- Close lid and steam valve and set to high pressure for 30 minutes. When done let steam release naturally.
- Remove chicken and shred or chop on cutting board, will fall apart easily.
- Return meat to soup and stir. If you want a thicker version you can scoop some of the hot liquid out of your pot and whisk in 2 tbsp cornstarch until smooth.
- Set pot to saute again and pour this in when it is bubbling. Stir and let it bubble for about 2 minutes so it can thicken up nicely. Then turn off and serve.
Video
Notes
Made With Frozen Chicken
You can use frozen small size boneless skinless breasts or thighs to make this but they need to be separated from one another. If they aren’t run under cool water and pull apart. Then the same cook time would apply as above, 30 minutes, same as our chicken noodle soup with frozen chickenNutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
What side dishes are best?
I think bread of some kind is a must, rarely do I make anything else to go with this or our Instant Pot chicken noodle soup.
- Our air fryer garlic bread rolls are amazing.
- You can make just a simple loaf of air fryer bread as well.
- Give this pretty bundt Instant Pot cornbread a whirl.
- OR if you want to cook something outside, people love our cheesy smoked bread.
We just added this one to our list of Instant Pot soup recipes. With precooked meat the cook time is about the same to ensure the grains get tender enough. If you too love a bowl of warmth for dinner too you should try a few others after you fall in love with this one. 😉
When do you add the 1cup of water in this recipe? I don’t see it in the directions, thanks.
Sorry, with the broth