Instant Pot Chicken Spaghetti is an easy recipe, perfect any night of the week! Quick to make and using simple ingredients, this dish is comforting and delicious. Using a super modern cooking appliance means pressure cooker chicken spaghetti is smart easy and fuss free! You will be making this Instant Pot Chicken Parmesan Pasta for an easy dinner again and again and again!
Recipes like my Instant Pot Spaghetti with Jar Sauce and Instant Pot Spaghetti with Meat Sauce give us basic recipes that can be whipped up quick smart!
My Instant Pot Pasta Primavera is loaded with flavour for a vegetarian pasta! All of my spaghetti recipes are in the one (twirl worthy) spot!
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🤍 Recipe Highlights
The Instant Pot is handy as it makes cooking fast and able to be done in the one removeable pot saving time, energy and effort. Of the many reasons why you will love ❤❤❤ this recipe, these will likely be your favourite:
- Non traditional spaghetti recipe: we all love a good spag bowl, like my Slow Cooker Spaghetti Bolognese, but sometimes it is nice to have a change with recipes that switch it up a little.
- One pot recipe: we use the Instant Pot both to cook the spaghetti as well as the chicken, pasta sauce and complete the dish.
- Freezer Friendly: make a batch of this on the weekend, let cool and portion into meals during the next few weeks!
- Smart easy: instant pot spaghetti and chicken is not a time consuming recipe 😉😘 . Using cooked chicken means we focus on cooking the pasta not both the pasta and raw chicken from scratch.
- Creamy Sauce: the sauce for the recipe is creamy and smooth. Using cream cheese and a little wine, we create a nice alternative to a traditional Italian tomato sauce.
- Leftover chicken: is ideal to use in this spaghetti. It gives you an option for what to do with roast chicken that you had the night before and need to use up the next day.
🥗 Ingredients
Everything you need to make the recipe is shown in the photo below. It is a handy visual guide to refer to at the shops 😉. For exact measurements and detailed instructions please refer to the printable recipe card at the bottom of the post.
As you can see, the recipe calls for:
- Chicken: my preference for this is to use leftover or store bought chicken pieces. It then gives you a recipe up your sleeve so that when you have left over chicken, you have a purpose in mind for it.
- Dried Spaghetti: you can use a variety of pastas for this recipe. So if fettucini, penne, rigatoni or macaroni are more your style, substitute that for the dried spaghetti.
- Salt: you will see it in the photo twice above. That is because we also use a pinch for cooking the pasta in the Instant Pot.
- Sun-Dried Tomatoes: grab a jar from the olives/artichoke aisle in the supermarket. You can use whole sun dried tomatoes or strips. For both, I recommend using kitchen scissors to chop into smaller pieces.
- Capers: these are salty and briney, perfect for pairing with pasta. We drain them, don't rinse, but do discard the brine.
- Pasta Water: we cook the spaghetti in the Instant Pot under the pressure cook mode. This is done by adding the spaghetti (broken in half), a pinch of salt and then covering it with water.
🍜 Chicken Spaghetti Sauce
- Sun-dried Tomato Oil: if you purchase sun dried tomatos in a jar, they will be preserved in oil. This is full of delicious flavour, so rather than using olive oil, I recommend using this oil.
- Butter: regular, unsalted butter chopped into pieces. This ingredient pairs with the wine and cream cheese for the pasta sauce.
- Garlic: we add 2 to 3 finely chopped cloves of garlic or you can use 1 tablespoon minced garlic. This gives the pasta sauce additional flavour.
- Cream Cheese: we use this ingredient to help create a creamy pasta sauce.
- White Wine: the type of wine won't matter a great deal, however, if you can choose, a dry sweet wine. I use Pinot Gris as I almost always have it in the fridge and it is the perfect compliment to the creamy cheesy sauce!
- Salt/pepper: only a little of each needed and is used for seasoning. It is also a good idea to have some cracked black pepper for serving.
- Parmesan cheese: this helps to ensure that the sauce is thick, creamy and cheesy. You can also use a little for garnish if you like.
- Reserved Pasta Water: this is the water that the pasta has been cooked it. It is starchy and will be a cloudy white colour. I have shown it in the photo above so that you know when you drain the pasta, you need to hang on to some of this.
- Parsley: rinsed, dried and finely chopped. This is used both for garnish and colour.
🍳 Instructions
Here are the step by step instructions to make the recipe. We cook the spaghetti in the pressure cooker as a starting point.
- Cook spaghetti, drain and reserve pasta water (Photo 1)
- Use the saute function to start the sauce (Photo 2)
- Stir till cream cheese melts (Photo 3)
- Add cooked spaghetti and pasta water (Photo 4)
👩🍳 How to Make Instant Pot Chicken Spaghetti
Using the pressure cook mode, we cook the spaghetti. On the packet of dried pasta it will give you stove top instructions and a time. For example 10 minutes. In the pressure cooker, we take that time, divide it by 2 and then subtract 1 minute. In this example it will take 4 minutes to cook the pasta.
It is worthwhile to note however, that the pot needs to heat at this initial stage, so once you have programmed it, it will do its thing before cooking for the 4 minutes.
Once the spaghetti is cooked, we release the pressure, remove the pot using oven mits, then drain and keep some of the water.
- Add chicken, sun-dried tomatoes (Photo 6)
The photo above is to show you that once you have started the sauce and added the cooked pasta and reserved water back to the pot, you can then add the diced chicken pieces and chopped sun-dried tomatoes.
- Add capers and stir combine (Photo 6)
At the stage of adding in the capers, we are still using the saute mode and simply stirring as the heat works to warm the entire contents of the pot.
Once the dish is cooked and you are getting ready to serve, cancel the saute function and press to slow cooker function.
This will allow you to keep the dish warm, but not over cook the spaghetti which would result in it sticking to the bottom of the pan.
You can see that as the creamy pasta sauce has a pale colour, the sun-dried tomatoes, capers and parsley help make it appetizing due to the pops of colour they provide!
🍽 Serving Suggestions
This is a complete meal! It is unlikely that you will need (or be able to fit) any sides in!
However, if you want a smaller portion of pasta combined with a side, either the Ciabatta Garlic Bread or Garlic Pizza Bread are perfect 💖. To garnish the dish simply sprinkle parmesan cheese and chopped parsley on top, a little cracked black pepper and portion onto serving plates!
😉 Substitutions and Variations
As always, there are a couple of things that you can do to add or subtract from the recipe to suit your lifestyle. Try the following for ideas:
- You can use chicken broth (stock) to cook the spaghetti if you want.
- Use gluten free pasta.
- Try wholemeal spaghetti instead of regular.
- Use additional chopped herbs for garnish such as basil.
- You don't have to use spaghetti. You could use fettucini, linguine, penne, rigatoni, macaroni or your favourite pasta. Refer to the packet instructions and follow the formula of dividing that time and subtracting one to get the cook time.
💡 Tasty Tips
Here are my top tips and tricks that I want to share with you so that you master the recipe from the get go:
- Use kitchen scissors to chop the chicken meat and sun-dried tomatoes, bite size is better than huge chicken pieces.
- Use left over chicken thigh meat or chicken tenders, poached chicken or store bought chicken meat.
- When making the sauce, stir regularly to ensure it doesn't burn.
🤓 Frequently Asked Questions
Can you make chicken spaghetti in the Instant Pot?
Yes, you can use the Instant Pot to make chicken spaghetti and it is really easy to do so.
The process involves cooking the spaghetti, keeping some of that water, making a creamy sauce, adding cooked chicken pieces and a few extras to the pot and stirring to combine.
You will use both the pressure cooker function as well as the saute function to achieve the best results.
How do you make spaghetti sauce in a pressure cooker?
Use the saute function of the Instant Pot by selecting this button and adjust the timer to 10 mins. Add oil, butter, garlic, salt and pepper. Then add cream cheese and the wine, stir to keep things moving in the pot.
Once the cheese has melted and sauce is combined with add the cooked pasta and reserved pasta water to the spaghetti and stir.
What is the ratio of water to pasta in Instant Pot?
You need enough water in the Instant Pot to cover the spaghetti.
Break the dried spaghetti in half and lay flat in the bottom of the pot. Then pour water over the top. None of the pasta should be sticking up above the level of the water. Ensure it is covered with a visible liquid surface.
Why is my Instant Pot spaghetti watery?
Once you have cooked the spaghetti, you will remove the pot and drain the water from the pasta.
As we use some of this water for the sauce, you need to have a heatproof jug under the colander to catch this water.
Using both the pressure cooker function and the saute mode of the Instant Pot allows us to have a creamy based pasta sauce that is not watery. Using only the pressure cooker mode and adding all of the ingredients at once can lead to watery results, unless you use a tried and tested recipe that refines ingredient amounts.
😍 More Easy Pasta Recipes
How good is pasta! Could eat it almost every night of the week right? Here are some more pasta and noodle recipes I think you will enjoy:
- Garlic Spaghetti
- Pesto Pappardelle
- Pork Mince Pasta
- Gnocchi Gorgonzola
- Instant Pot Rigatoni with Jar Sauce
- Garlic Prawn Spaghetti
- Instant Pot Garlic Pasta
- Instant Pot Penne Pasta
- Garlic Bacon Pasta
- Slow Cooker Spaghetti Bolognese
You can also find all of my pasta recipes in the one spot. Its time to get your pot cooking your pasta instantly my friend 😘!
Adrianne xx
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📖 Recipe
Instant Pot Chicken Spaghetti
Equipment
- 1 Instant Pot (Pressure Cooker)
- 1 Colander
- 1 Heatproof jug
- 1 Wooden spoon
Ingredients
- 500 grams/16 oz dried spaghetti
- water to cook pasta
- salt to cook pasta
- 500 grams/16 oz chicken meat
- 1 ½ cups sun-dried tomatoes roughly chopped. Note 1
- ½ cup capers in brine drained, not rinsed. Note 2
- cracked pepper to garnish
- parsley finely chopped, to garnish (optional)
Chicken Spaghetti Sauce
- 2 tbs sun-dried tomato oil Also Note 1
- 50 grams butter
- 2 cloves garlic finely chopped
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon cracked black pepper
- 250 grams cream cheese
- ¼ cup white wine
- ¼ cup parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Cook the spaghetti: Break dried spaghetti in half, lay flat in Instant Pot, add pinch of salt and pour water over to cover. Press the pressure cook button and timer for 4 minutes. Once cooked, use the quick release to reduce the pressure and remove the lid. Note 3
- Drain pasta, reserve pasta water: Once the spaghetti is cooked, drain and reserve 1 cup of it for the sauce. Note
- Make the Sauce: press the saute button, heat sun-dried tomato oil, add garlic, salt, pepper white wine, cream cheese and stir till smooth and creamy. Note (Keep stirring during this time so that the sauce doesn't burn).
- Add the cooked pasta: Add the cooked spaghetti to the pasta sauce, followed by the reserved pasta water. Stir to combine.
- Cook the Chicken: add chicken pieces, followed by sun-dried tomato pieces and capers, stir till heated through.
- Serve and enjoy: Portion the spaghetti across the serving plates. Top with parmesan cheese, parsley and cracked black pepper.
Notes
- Note 1 - Sun Dried Tomatoes: Most jars of Sun-Dried Tomatoes will be sold with the tomatoes in oil. Reserve this oil and use this as a starting point when making the sauce and cooking the chicken. If you use deli style sun-dried tomatoes they won't come in oil. In which case, use the equivalent amount, ie 2 tablespoons of olive oil instead.
- Note 2 - Capers: When shopping for the capers, I use a jar which reads 110 grams. I drain and discard the brine and use this full amount of capers. It is quite close to ½ cup. A little more or less of these will be fine.
- Note 3 - Cook Time: my spaghetti packet indicates the cook time is 10 minutes. So divide this by 2 and subtract 1 to get 4 minutes. Adjust this time according to the cook time on your packet of pasta.
- Serving Size: This recipe will serve 4 to 6 people depending on portion size.
Nutrition
Recipe published May 2022, updated October 2022 with more tasty tips for you 😘🥰😉!
Melinda says
I'm new to pressure cooking but this looks easy so I will try. Thanks
Adrianne says
Sounds great Melinda, thanks and hope you enjoy it!
Tiffany says
We made this for dinner last night and I took leftovers for lunch today yum.
Belinda says
Made this on the weekend, thanks its so good.
Adrianne says
Great to hear your feedback, thanks!