Instant Pot Leftover Chicken Recipes (2024)

Leftover chicken recipes Instant Pot style are the best. Do NOT waste food, instead make it into a second one pot meal in your pressure cooker tonight. Any pressure cooker, Crockpot Express or Ninja Foodi will work for these. There are so many leftover chicken recipes we love.

I HATE wasting food! I have made so many Instant Pot leftover chicken recipes that I thought I’d share them with you. I cannot be alone. Using just a few ingredients in your pantry and fridge you too can make this new pressure cooker dinner or more in our list below. Easy Instant Pot recipes are here. (affiliate links present, originally published 11/21)

Instant Pot Leftover Chicken Recipe

This was a throw together meal one night when I had made salsa chicken the night before, and had a few cups left over. It was too good to throw away so I looked to see what I had that would taste good with it. I am all about easy and quick Ninja Foodi recipes. Or use a Crockpot Express, the brand doesn’t matter.

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In our recipe card below you’ll see instructions for the black bean, corn and rice Mexican casserole style dish you see here. Then I will list many others above that you can try if you have leftovers. Really any sort of diced or shredded chicken or beef works with them.

If you are new to pressure cooking we have a lot of easy one pot meal recipes for you here. To begin with let’s start with a few basic tips:

• Make sure to Bookmark our InstaPot recipes page. We add new ones each week!
• Then PRINT this —–> Instant Pot cooking times cheat sheet that will help you understand how long meat, vegetables and beans take to cook in your pressure cooker.
  • This is a great InstaPot cookbook and a set of wooden utensils are great to grab too.
  • I HIGHLY recommend you buy this non stick pot.
    • You should still deglaze pressure cooker after sautéing but it won’t have as many issues with this better liner.

For reference, this is the pressure cooker I have (a 6 quart) and use for all recipe creations.

Ninja Foodi Leftover Chicken Recipe

This works if you have eaten part of a rotisserie chicken but have some left over the next day. Made boiled shredded chicken but didn’t eat it all? Use that too, as long as it is precooked you can throw it in using the measurements below.

This is what I had in the cupboard that I thought would go well together. The most important aspect of this is the ratio of liquid to grains. As for the veggies you could leave that can out if you didn’t want corn included, but it brings great texture to the dish.

1. Chopped pre-cooked meat
2. Can of corn kernels drained
3. A can of black beans, drained and rinsed
4. Salsa, medium is best to add as much flavor as possible
5. Chicken broth and water, or use just one of the two but stick with the same amount listed below
6. Uncooked white rice

We added lots of cheese to this too but if you needed a dairy free option you could leave that out. As far as seasonings I sprinkled in salt and pepper and then just added more when done. Depending on how seasoned your meat is you may need less or more.

Pressure Cooker Leftover Chicken Recipes

You’re going to use about 2 cups of meat for this. This should be measured after it’s been diced up into smaller pieces. I wouldn’t add much more than that or else there won’t be enough liquid for the starches to absorb.

• You’re going to start with putting your leftover chicken breast (or thighs) into the pressure cooker on bottom. Then drain your can of corn and dump this in.
• Drain and rinse the can of black beans. Dump that on top. Sprinkle in the white uncooked rice on top (I haven’t tested brown rice yet).
  • Pour in liquids followed by the salsa. Use the back of a spoon to gently submerge rice on top into liquid below, do NOT stir.
• Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and any other seasonings you like. Close lid and seal steam valve. Cook on manual high pressure cook for 6 minutes cook time with a 8 minute natural release. Do not quick release or rice won’t be done.
• Lift lid, fluff rice and mix contents gently. Sprinkle top with cheese and set lid on to melt.

I add an added layer of shredded cheese on the top of each serving. A slice or two of avocado is amazing and a dollop of sour cream after that is even better.

Leftover Rotisserie Chicken Recipes

Our favorite is probably our Instant Pot chicken thighs and rice.

I have shared so many because my mom never let any food go to waste. It was very common for us to have casserole recipes to eat because of this. Add some vegetables, and either rice or pasta and voila, you have a brand new meal. 😉

We have a few other ideas you can try too that we know you’ll like this Instant Pot fajita soup recipe. This one could easily use shredded beef instead if that is what you have on hand. Then there comes soup, I probably make one of these more than anything else because they just come out so good.

• During the Winter months I love Instant Pot chicken pot pie soup or Instant Pot buffalo chicken dip.
• Add tons of veggies to Instant Pot chicken vegetable soup for a really cheap and healthy meal.
• I grew up on chicken and rice casserole but now I make it in a pressure cooker to make things even faster.
• If you want to make this, but with noodles instead of rice follow our pressure cooker Mexican casserole here.

Another one with pasta is Instant Pot chicken noodle casserole dish. Want to make an unusual dish kids will love? Give Instant Pot peanut butter chicken a whirl some night. Just find one of many IP recipes on my blog featuring this white meat and skip the initial saute function since it’s already cooked basically!

What to Make with Leftover Chicken Breasts

Recipes using leftover chicken don’t have to be boring y’all! I mean yeah you can throw it on top of a salad or make some boring egg noodles and serve that as a side dish but there are so many pressure cooker chicken recipes to choose from here.

What to do with leftovers? This is different than what I do with “regular” dishes that use all fresh meats. Since the proteins were already saved and refrigerated once, and then reheated to make this I typically won’t save what is left. I suppose 1 day would be just fine to store in a container in the fridge and reheated but I choose not to.

When you do save your meat initially you should always make sure you package it up once it is at room temperature and use it up in one of these ways within 3 days of it being cooked initially. You want to save it the right way so there is no chance of bacterial growth.

Give one or more of our comfort food ideas here and let us know what you think! Do you have a favorite that you stick with on a regular basis we should try? I bet you have one in mind that your family asks for again and again too. Let me know in the comments below or email me. 😉

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