Instant Pot Chicken Soup
Updated Jun 28, 2024
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Instant Pot Chicken Soup is a basic chicken soup recipe that is remarkably cozy, tastes flavorful and is made in a flash.
I love soup season. Soup makes for quick meals and warm bellies. This is a basic chicken soup with no noodles. It is made with onions, celery, carrots, chicken, and a broth that is delicious.
Instant Pot Chicken Soup
This soup is really flexible in that you can cater it exactly to your taste buds. If you want to add potatoes-throw em in. It is really forgiving and tastes delicious no matter what I add to the pot.
This is a great soup to make because it is a crowd favorite that is just a tad different than the typical chicken noodle soup. Plus, so so easy!
Ingredients
- Onion, carrots, celery, and garlic: these are the base of the flavors for the soup. It doesn’t have many ingredients but these few things add tons of flavor, nutrition, and color to the dish
- Chicken stock: this is the backbone of any good soup, get a good brand or try making it at home for best results (here’s my recipe for Instant Pot chicken broth)
- Chicken: lots of flexibility here on what king you use, you can use anything from chicken breast to chicken thighs and anything can have the bone in or skin on if you’d like. See the recipe notes for more information
- Seasoning (bay leaves, salt, rosemary, thyme): these are the flavors used in this soup, simple and hearty, you can add or change these as you’d like
- Add ins if you’d like: see the recipes notes on how to add pasta, noodles, rice, or potatoes to this soup if you’d like
Recipe Instructions
- Long live the Instant Pot! Sauté the veggies in the Instant Pot.
- Add the broth, chicken, and veggies.
- Let everything cook.
- Serve right away. So easy.
- Full recipe below, keep reading!
Frequently Asked Questions
Soup has never been easier than with the help of the Instant Pot. You can use the sauté option to cook up your onions and veggies and then just select high pressure and a 10 minute cook time and you’ll have soup before you know it.
I like to pair my soup with a crusty bread or a simple salad. You could also add a grilled cheese sandwich to complete the meal. Bread suggestions would be my famous sourdough bread, baguettes, Mom’s French bread, or cornbread.
They can be used interchangeably however, chicken thighs are juicer, more tender and have a fuller flavor than chicken breasts do. But I for sure use chicken breast in this too.
More Recipes
- Old Fashioned Chicken and Dumplings Soup
- The Best Instant Pot Broccoli and Cheese Soup
- Instant Pot Potato Soup
- Quick, Easy, and Healthy White Chicken Enchilada Soup
If you’ve tried this Instant Pot Chicken Soup recipe or any other recipe on Bless this Mess, then don’t forget to rate the recipe and leave me a comment below! I would love to hear about your experience making it. And if you snapped some pictures of it, share it with me on Instagram so I can repost on my stories.
Instant Pot Chicken Soup
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large onion, diced
- 4 large carrots, diced
- 4 large stalks celery, diced
- 5 large garlic cloves, minced
- 8 cups chicken stock, (homemade chicken stock is a great option)
- 1.5 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts or 2 pounds bone-in chicken meat, (see notes)
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- Additional salt and pepper to taste
- Optional additional add-ins: cooked rice, pasta, potatoes
Instructions
- Select browning/saute to preheat the pressure cooker. Add the olive oil, onion, carrots, and celery and saute until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic and cook until the garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds.
- Stir in the chicken stock.
- Add the chicken, bay leaves, salt, rosemary, and thyme to the pot.
- Lock the lid in place, make sure the vent is set to seal, and select high pressure and 10 minute cook time (if using chicken breast).
- When the cooking time ends, use the quick pressure release. When the valve drops, remove the lid carefully.
- Remove the chicken from the pot and shred it. Return to the soup.
- Adjust salt and pepper to taste and serve hot.
- You can add noodles at this point, just use the sauté setting to boil the soup to cook the noodles according the package directions. If adding cooked rice, stir it in just before serving. If adding potatoes, peel and cut them into 1 inch cubes and add them when you add the chicken.
Notes
- What I love about this recipe is you can use what you like or have on hand when it comes to the chicken you use in this recipe. It’s very accommodating. You can use boneless skinless chicken breast very easily but it’s also great if you want to cook come bone-in, skin-on chicken. You’ll just need to remove the chicken from the pan before serving and remove the meat from the bones. I often use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs for this recipe as they are very inexpensive and have great flavor. If you are cooking bone-in chicken increase your cook time to 18 minutes. If you are using really huge chicken breast cut them in half or quarters before adding them to the pot so that they cook through in the time allotted.
- You can sauté the chicken in the hot pot before adding anything for added flavor if you’d like. Just sauté until the outside of the chicken browns up. Remove from the pan and proceed with the recipe, adding the browned chicken to the pot when it says to add the chicken.
- Here’s how you can add things to this soup: you can add noodles before serving, just use the sauté setting to boil the soup to cook the noodles according the package directions (you might need to adjust the broth a bit but I normally just let the noodles soak it up and have a thicker soup). If adding cooked rice, stir it in just before serving (it’s a great way to use leftover rice, and it’s easier to use leftover than trying to cook it in the soup). If adding potatoes, peel and cut them into 1 inch cubes and add them when you add the chicken.
- I really like adding a package of those tiny star pasta to this recipe (chicken and stars was a canned soup I had on sick days in childhood!), look for the star pasta in the Hispanic section. It’s also great with homemade noodles that don’t soak up too much liquid and cook quickly.
- You can add additional vegetables at the end if you’d like too like peas, corn or green beans (use frozen or canned as they just need to be heated and will be in the hot broth).
- The cook time reflects the time it take the pressure cooked to come up to pressure and back down again.
Nutrition
Instant Pot Chicken Soup is a recipe that you need in your fall and winter line-up. It is incredibly easy and tasty.
This soup is awesome! Very savory and satisfying. Definately a keeper. I’d give it
more than 5 stars if I could. Thank you for this recipe!
So glad I found your recipe. I was getting over being sick and wanted a gut-friendly soup as my first real food other than crackers. I had to modify it since so eliminated onions, garlic and spices except salt and a little pepper.
I used 7 cups of water (!) instead of broth (I usually use Better than Bouillon), again, to eliminate garlic and onion, which I’m somewhat sensitive to even when well. I added red potatoes in with the chicken as you suggested.
But even stripping the recipe of flavor enhancers, it was surprisingly flavorful. My husband really liked it and had two servings. (Hey, get away from my “sick” food!) I’d only made chicken soup on the stove and this was so much better. As you point out, you can modify this in so many ways. Thank you!
This is the way to go. Chicken soup in no more than 45 minutes?! Takes a few more minutes to add my family’s favorite dumplings. Awesome!