This Instant Pot shredded chicken tacos with barbecue is the bomb!! It’s SO good and you only need 3 ingredients to make it. $15 meal for 5 that’s healthy and so simple.
I’m in love with my Instant Pot! It makes dinnertime so much easier and I feel like I cook much more often for the 5 of us because of it, that’s a win win in my book. Last night I made this 4 ingredient Instant Pot shredded chicken “Hawaiian style” and it came out SO very delicious. I added it to small soft tortillas with some cheese and avocado slices and made tacos with it. Everyone raved about how good this turned out and it just took 15 minutes to cook in my new favorite appliance. Here is the easy recipe, and one of our favorite Instant Pot recipes now, especially for taco Tuesdays! (affiliate links present)
Amazing doesn’t even describe this meal! Just 3 ingredients and an Instant Pot and you’re ready to go! We love it like I said, served in flour tortillas but we’ve served it over rice before too and it’s just as good. It is a pretty healthy chicken recipe too and really inexpensive to make costing only about $15 total for the whole meal which served all 5 of us + leftovers for me to eat it for lunch the next day. Here is what you will need and a quick video of how I make it:
Instant Pot Shredded Chicken
- Instant Pot
- 1 1/2 bottles of barbecue sauce (about 26 oz.)
- 1 small can of chunk pineapple
- 3 boneless chicken breasts
Instant Pot shredded chicken with barbecue sauce and a bit of pineapple to sweeten it up. Super easy pressure cooker chicken recipe that's perfect for making chicken tacos for dinner and healthy too.
- 1 1/2 jars barbecue sauce 26 oz. or so
- 1 small can of chunk pineapple with juice
- 3 boneless / skinless chicken breasts
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 pkg. small flour tortillas
- 1 c shredded jack cheese
- Sliced avocado - optional
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Empty 1 jar of barbecue sauce on bottom of Instant Pot (18 oz.).
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Put chicken breasts on top of your sauce gently (not pushing down, you want sauce to be between pot and chicken to avoid getting too brown), squeeze half jar of 2nd jar of barbecue sauce on top of the chicken.
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Empty can of pineapple with the juice on top of that, and add soy sauce.
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Close Instant Pot and make sure steam valve is closed. Set to poultry setting for 15 minutes (automatically sets to this time when you hit the poultry function).
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When it beeps carefully release steam valve and then lift lid, add chicken to tacos or on top of rice. Ours came out really nice and tender and just shredded it in the pot and served from there!
If you don’t have an Instant Pot yet I highly recommend it because it helps busy families like you and me. I’m constantly adding to my recipes and you can find them all here on my Instant Pot Recipes page so bookmark that to refer back to it later! 😉
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I’m new to the instant pot. Could I do this with frozen chicken? What would I need to change?
Increase time….maybe 3 more minutes??
Your frozen foods will thaw as the IP comes to pressure, so you don’t want to increase the cook time, or you risk over-cooking the chicken and making it dry. Using frozen foods takes a little bit longer to cook because it takes a little bit longer for the IP to fully pressurize. But thawing in the IP for a few minutes is a lot less time than thawing in the sink or refrigerator, so you’re still saving time!
Can I make the recipe without the pineapple?
Yes of course
I just made this and the bottoms of the chicken breasts ended up completely burnt. I removed the burnt parts and shredded the rest and it was still delicious, but any idea what I did wrong? I followed the instructions exactly. I used Sweet Baby Rays Hickory & Brown Sugar BBQ sauce–could that be why?
Could be the brown sugar sauce or you pushed chicken down instead of laying on top of sauce so it was too close to bottom. Ours was browned but definitely not burned.
Do I have to use that much bar-b-que sauce? Will it work with half that amount or will that be too dry?