Instant Pot Greek Chicken

Jeff the Chef

Turn everyday chicken breasts into Instant Pot Greek Chicken in a zesty yogurt sauce atop a bed of rice. Because it reheats beautifully, it makes a great meal prep recipe.

Instant Pot Greek Chicken
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Instant Pot Greek Chicken

Servings

4

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes
Calories

300

kcal

Make sure the yogurt is at room temperature.

Ingredients

  • 14 oz. (2 cups) jasmine rice

  • 16 oz. (2 cups) water

  • 1½ tsp salt, divided

  • 1 head med-to-large head garlic

  • 2 Tbs olive oil, divided

  • 1 Tbs butter

  • 2 chicken breasts

  • 1/2-1 cup finely diced Vedalia onion (about 1/4-1/2 of an onion)

  • 1/2 cup chicken stock

  • 3 Tbs dry vermouth

  • 1 large sun-dried tomato, cut into small pieces

  • 7 Greek olives, sliced, plus more for garnish

  • 2 Tbs artichoke heart, chopped

  • 1 Tbs oregano

  • 1/2 tsp basil

  • 1/4 tsp dill

  • 1/4 tsp marjoram

  • 1/4 tsp thyme

  • 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon

  • 1/8 tsp nutmeg

  • Zest and juice of 1/2 a lemon

  • 1 Tbs cornstarch

  • 2½ tsp flour

  • 1-1½ cup Greek yogurt, room temperature

  • Feta cheese, for garnish

  • Parsley, for garnish

Directions

  • Rinse the rice at least 3 times. Place rice, water, and 3/4 tsp salt in Instant Pot. Set the Instant Pot’s RICE function to normal (time), low (pressure); natural release for 10 minutes. Remove the rice from the pot and keep warm (or plan to reheat). Wash and dry the Instant Pot’s inner pot.
  • Preheat oven to 350°F. Rub away any easily removable layers of the garlic’s skin. Slice off just enough of the end of the head, opposite the root, to expose the garlic cloves, Place the prepped head of garlic on a sheet of foil. Drizzle a scant Tbs of olive oil over the exposed cloves, sprinkle lightly with salt, then bring up the edges of the foil and crimp to seal. Roast until the cloves start to separate from the skins and they appear soft, creamy, and slightly golden-brown, for 45 to 50 minutes. Unwrap the garlic and let it cool for 10 minutes. Gently squeeze out the pulp.
  • Set the Instant Pot’s SAUTÉ function to more, 30 minutes. When the pot gives you the hot indication, heat the remaining 1 Tbs (or so) olive oil & butter until the butter has melted. Brown the chicken until it releases from the pan reasonably well, 6 minutes. Flip and repeat. Remove from pan. Add the onion to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until the onion is translucent, 2½ minutes. ֍Add the chicken stock, vermouth, and sun-dried tomato and deglaze the pan. CANCEL the sauté. Add the chicken back to the pan. Screw on the lid and set the pot to POULTRY, less (5 minutes), high (pressure); quick release.
  • Add olives, artichokes, herbs, spices, pepper flakes, lemon zest, and 1/2 tsp salt; mix well. Pressure cook once again: POULTRY, less (5 minutes), high (pressure); quick release. Remove the chicken.
  • Set the Instant Pot’s SAUTÉ function to more, 30 minutes. Stir in cornstarch and flour, and bring to a boil, whisking vigorously until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. CANCEL the sauté.
  • Mash 6 (or more) of the garlic cloves (repurpose the rest) and whisk them into the sauce. Wait until the sauce is no longer boiling, then whisk in the yogurt. Add a generous squeeze of lemon juice.
  • After allowing the chicken to rest, slice it and lay it on a plate over rice. Or, cube the chicken and stir it back into the pot. Serve over rice, garnish with crumbled feta, chopped olives, and parsley.

Notes

  • Substitutions: cooking sherry for the vermouth
  • I developed this recipe for a six-quart Instant Pot. If using a different size or type of pot, you may need to make modifications. Althought the pot may say “instant,” this recipe’s long list of ingredients will make for anything but quick work. Maybe this is more of a weekend dish than a weeknight dish.
"Instant Pot Greek Chicken," from Make It Like a Man!

This dish reheats perfectly if you’re gentle with the microwave. I use mine’s “dinner plate reheat” setting, and it works great. If you get the sauce too hot, it may split.

Social Learning

Tips & Tricks

I’m no expert, but I have somehow stumbled onto a method for making perfect rice – nearly as good as what you might get at an Asian restaurant. So, if you take nothing else away from this recipe, take that.

When it comes to rinsing, here’s how I do it: I weigh the rice in a four-cup container. Then I cover it by about two inches with cool water. I agitate the rice with my hand, and then I pour the water off through a Chinese spider. You don’t have to pour all of the rice into the spider; you just have to drain the water from the rice, and some of it will fall into the spider. Spank it all back into the container and repeat. People who give advice about rice tell you to do this until the water runs clear, but I’m here to tell you that that will never happen. It will run clearer. The first time you agitate the rice and then let it settle, you won’t be able to see the rice through the cloudy water. The third or fourth time, you will be able to see the rice, but I’d hardly call the water “clear.”

If you know how to brown chicken breasts in an Instant Pot with minimal sticking, I’d love to know about it!

You may be able to find Greek olives packaged together with feta cubes at a fancy grocery. Bonus!

The larger amount of yogurt is my preference. It will elevate the taste of the yogurt – which I love – in the flavor profile. It will also increase the sauce-to-meat ratio, which will seem like too much until you pair it with the rice.

Ideas

Surprisingly, this Instant Pot Greek Chicken is also good cold! Use the lesser amount of yogurt. Dice the chicken and then run a few chops through it.

The Backstory

This recipe is directly inspired by Kitchen Inspirations. I wandered quite far off Eva’s path, but its still her woods that I’m walking through.

I like to make dishes like this – because they’re so good leftover – on the weekend, and use it for weekday meals. If it’s going to be part of your weekly meal prep, then you might as well also economize. I suggest that you buy a family pack of chicken. Use half of it for this dish, and the other half throughout the week on its own, in a salad, or for so many other recipes that use can use cooked already-chicken as an ingredient.

To do this, pre-heat the oven to 350°F and toss in the prepped garlic. Dry the chicken, and heat a cast-iron skillet over a high flame (setting 6 of 9) on an ultra-high burner for three minutes. Open the windows, turn on the hood fan, and add 2 Tbs oil. Just before you lay the first batch of chicken into the pan, salt and pepper the top side of it. Lay it in seasoned-side-down, season the tops, and cover with a spatter screen. Let it brown for four minutes, flip it, then another four. Remove to a plate and reserve for Instant Pot Greek Chicken. Repeat with a second batch, but after flipping, bake to 160°F. Let the baked chicken cool, then refrigerate for future use.

You don’t want to leave those brown bits in the pan, so you might as well cook the onions in that pan, and then deglaze it with the stock if need be. Finally, scrape it all into the Instant Pot and continue with the directions.֍

"Instant Pot Greek Chicken," from Make It Like a Man!
Instant Pot Greek Chicken

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! unless otherwise credited. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. References: All Recipes, Food Network, Kitchen Inspirations, The Recipe Critic. Thank you, Kesor. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #15 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.

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54 thoughts on “Instant Pot Greek Chicken”

  1. Wow! I love all one hundred of the ingredients in this chicken dish!!! I don’t have an instapot. I just don’t need anything insta. Lucky me! But fortunately I know how to make this in a pot.

    Reply

  3. This sounds really good Jeff! I don’t have an IP but think I could recreate the dish. Funny you mentioned rinsing the rice. My rice never came out very good until I started doing that. It really does make a HUGE difference.

    Reply

  7. Thank you for the shout out, Jeff. Your recipe looks delicious. I usually allow the stainless steel to thoroughly heat up before browning the chicken. Apparently, it causes the stainless steel to shrink and will prevent the chicken from sticking as much! So true about the rice!

    Reply

  9. Hay una gran cantidad de ingredientes en este pollo, pero la verdad es que desarrollas muy bien su elaboración, así como los consejos que acompañan la receta. El plato es buenísimo.
    Un saludo.

    Reply

  10. I love your recipes because they are so highly seasoned which is something that many forget to do! I do have an insta-pot but haven’t yet ventured to using it more than a few times. I best get to it!

    Reply

    • Thank you! That means a lot, because I often think I go overboard on seasoning … but I love flavor!

      Reply

  11. This looks like a great dinner. Interesting rice preparation too!! Send me your email if you can so I can respond directly to your comments.

    Reply

  14. ¡¡Hola Jeff!! Qué bien aprovechado está este pollo, con el arroz y todos estos ingredientes te ha quedado un plato 10. Cocinando con mimo, se consiguen platos tan fantásticos como el que nos traes hoy. Es perfecto para disfrutar comiendo y un plato de arroz siempre es bienvenido. Besitos.

    Reply

  16. Jeff, although I do not eat chicken or meat, I can still appreciate a good recipe. My son and daughter In Law would love this recipe. I’ll pass it on. thanks.

    Reply

  21. This looks simply delicious Jeff. I don’t cook much Greek cuisine, but I think I could recreate this in a stove top casserole dish and achieve a good result. Your tips about the rice look very helpful, and I like that the quantities could be increased to serve more people.
    I am saving this recipe for later, thanks so much

    Reply

  22. I’ll have to adapt this to a non-instant pot version, but it sounds easy enough to do…and it sounds delicious! The flavors in this recipe are right up my alley, Jeff. Plus, I love recipes that reheat well as leftovers. Oh, and you’re not the only one who enjoys spanking rice. “Bad rice, bad!”

    Reply

  23. We do this everytime with rice so the method sounds really familiar and quite easy specially if you do it in a daily basis. Getting a rice cooker is the easiest way preparing it, just rinse and add the exact amount of water with rice, 1:1 ratio. Recipe sounds really good

    Reply

  24. Sounds absolutely wonderful, though the garlic might kill me! (I know, I can make substitutions…) Greek food is probably the cuisine with which I’m the least familiar. I need to change that…

    Reply

    • It seems like I used to eat a lot of Greek food, but it’s been some time now since I’ve been to a Greek restaurant. So this dish seemed really refreshing.

      Reply

  26. Hi Jeff 🖐😉
    Thank you again for next a very creative and inspired recipe. I like so much Greek cousine, similarly to Italian couisne. I really like your method to prepare this dish in Greek style. Here always we can see something very interesting 👍🙂
    I greet you warmly and from the heart 😘🤗💕

    Reply
  28. Pingback: Pan-Fried Chicken with Cranberry Relish - Make It Like a Man!

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