I had a dear friend of mine move out of state, and decided to gift me the instant pot we used all the time when I worked with her at her meal prep and catering business. Outside of work, I never really felt the need to have one of these. I have several slow cookers and they all serve me well.... that was until I got this thing home and realized, I had been definitely been missing out.
So for the last 3 days, all the dinner meals have been made in it. The First day was a standard pot roast. The second was a herb and butter pork loin. Today I was feeling pretty good ( if you have known me for any length of time really you know summer just isn't my jam. It's too hot, especially where I live and it just makes me uncomfortable and cranky. There are days where it's so hot, that if I eat, there's a good chance it's gonna make me sick)
It was only 101° and that's a tolerable temp for here, so I decided to try my slow cooker sweet and spicy garlic chicken.
Normally this takes at least 4 hour in the slow cooker. Took under an hour with the instant pot.
All I did was take:
3 pounds of chicken breast (I feed a small army, so feel free to scale this down)
3 bell peppers of various colors (the sauce hides them but they are there)
1/2 white or yellow onion sliced thin
2 cups low sodium soy sauce ( I know I know, it seems like a lot but again, small army, this feeds at least 8 people)
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup sugar (brown raw or white, doesn't matter. I prefer brown but didn't have any and didn't want to make any at that time) or you can use honey / agave
10 cloves of garlic minced or 1 1/2 tbsp powdered garlic
2 tbsp sesame oil (i used chili sesame oil for the heat factor)
2 tbsp garlic chili paste (usually comes in a clear plastic jar with a green lid unless you make your own but that's a different post)
2 tbsp chili flakes (less or more depending on heat, my chili flakes are made from tepin chilis this year and they are surprisingly hot little peppers
Throw it all in the instant pot, press the chicken setting and time up to 45 minutes (if your chicken is frozen you might need to add a few more minutes. )
After it's done and pressure has released, Open her up, ladle some of the liquid out into a bowl, add 2 tbsp corn starch to the hot liquid, whisk up and pour back in. It should still be hot enough for the corn starch to do it's magic an thicken everything up really well.
I serve mine over rice, but you can most certainly mix it in with noodles or whatever else tbh
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