Published by Sheena Strain, last updated
Recipe
Easy Pressure cooker Chicken Puttanesca Recipe is a breeze to make in your Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker.
It’s a gluten free variation of the Italian dish Spaghetti alla puttanesca. My Instant Pot Chicken Puttanesca is made with chicken, tomatoes, olives, and herbs.
What isPuttanesca Sauce?
Puttanesca sauce hails from Naples, Italy and is typically made withtomatoes, black olives, capers, anchovies, onions, garlic, and often fresh herbs including oregano and parsley.
Like any great recipe there are some regional variations, sometimes the anchovies are left out (I don’t have them in this recipe) and chili peppers are sometimes included. I have of course added chicken to it to make a really hearty, easy weeknight dinner.
The sauceusually served over spaghetti or another pasta variety. I thought it would be great served over zucchini noodles instead of pasta, but you can choose whatever suits you best if you’re not following the paleo or Whole30 diet.
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How to make Pressure Cooker Chicken Puttanesca
This is a recipe that is easy enough to make on a weeknight for your family, but fancy enough to serve at a dinner party so that’s a win win in my book!
I like to saute the chicken thighs skin side down to crisp and brown them up a little before I cook them, even though they lose most of the crispiness when they are added to my Instant Pot they still retain a bit of the color.
The chicken is cooked easily in the pressure cooker for only 15 minutes at high pressure. It’s important you let the pressure drop naturally as directed, so that you don’t end up with a tough piece of chicken!
Kitchen items you’ll need for Instant pot Chicken Puttanesca
You’ll need a pressure cooker to make this recipe, while it will work in any version the timings are for an electric pressure cooker. If you don’t have one already I highly recommend choosingone of the Instant Pot brand of pressure cookers, I have two of them!
I have a helpful post that lists my top ten Instant Pot accessories so make sure you take a look at that too.
Related Pressure Cooker Chicken Recipes
- Pressure Cooker Wings with Blue Cheese Dip
- Pressure Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken
- Pressure Cooker Brunswick Stew
- Pressure Cooker Chicken Adobo
- Pressure Cooker Mongolian Chicken
- Pressure Cooker Greek Chicken
Pressure Cooker Chicken Puttanesca
This easy Pressure cooker Chicken Puttanesca Recipe is a breeze to make in your Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker, it’s a gluten free variation of the Italian dish Spaghetti alla puttanesca.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes
Total Carbs: 4 g
Protein: 19 g
Servings: 6
4.97 from 29 votes
Ingredients
- 6chicken thighs, skin on
- 2tablespoonsextra virgin olive oil
- 2clovesgarlic, crushed
- salt and freshly milled black pepper
- 1/2tspred chilli flakes, or to taste
- 14 1/2ozcanned chopped tomatoes, 400g
- 6ozpitted black olives, 175g
- 1tbspcapers, rinsed and drained
- 1tbspchopped fresh basil, I used basil in a tube as no fresh available
- 3/4cupwater, 190 mls
Instructions
Turn on the ‘saute’ function in your Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker and add the oil. Wait 1 minute (don’t wait until the display says hot) and add the chicken pieces skin side down, a couple of pieces at a time until they are browned and no longer stick to the bottom of the pot, about 5 minutes or so. Remove all browned chicken to a plate.
With the saute function still on, add the chopped tomatoes, water, olives, garlic, capers, chopped basil, red chili flakes, and some salt and pepper. Stir everything well, bring it up to a gentle simmer, then replace the chicken thighs in the pot.
Turn saute function off.
Lock the lid, turn the vent to ‘sealing’ and using the manual setting, adjust it to cook for 15 minutes at High Pressure.
When the cook time time is up, allow the unit to reduce pressure on its own without opening the steam release vent (Natural Release) for at least 12 minutes.
After 12 minutes you can carefully and slowly release the rest of the pressure.
Serve with a side of vegetables, I used zucchini noodles. You could also serve with gluten free pasta if you are not following the paleo or whole30 diet.
Recipe Notes
Adapted from Delia Online
Nutrition Facts
Pressure Cooker Chicken Puttanesca
Amount Per Serving
Calories 343Calories from Fat 243
% Daily Value*
Fat 27g42%
Saturated Fat 6g38%
Cholesterol 110mg37%
Sodium 670mg29%
Potassium 372mg11%
Carbohydrates 4g1%
Fiber 1g4%
Sugar 1g1%
Protein 19g38%
Vitamin A 330IU7%
Vitamin C 6.7mg8%
Calcium 47mg5%
Iron 1.6mg9%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
Nutritional information on Noshtastic is provided as a courtesy and is approximate only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the nutritional information given for any recipe on this site.
Author: Sheena Strain
Course:Main Course
Cuisine:Italian
About Sheena Strain
Sheena Strain is the proud owner of Noshtastic, a gluten free website that specializes in easy family meals including Low Carb, Keto, Paleo, Whole30, and many pressure cooker recipes.
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Vickie Laubner says
I don’t see anywhere what to do with the water! Help please!
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Sheena Strain says
Hi Vickie, the water goes into the pot in step 2: “With the saute function still on, add the chopped tomatoes, water, olives, garlic, capers, chopped basil….”
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Penny Kagigebi says
Sheena – So, , , we were able to locally source chicken and the thighs are enormous. Do you have an approximate weight for the meat you used? I’m hoping for same/similar calorie etc outcomes.
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See Alsomy cookbooks: recipe indexSheena Strain says
I don’t know exactly how big they were, probably about 4-6 ounces each I’d guess.
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Jean K says
HI! I made this recipe tonight and I’ve never had a puttanesca before. The sauce seemed very watery. The only thing I did different was add an additional two thighs, otherwise I followed directions to a “T”. I was expecting something thicker like a spaghetti style sauce.
Also, is there supposed to be onion in it? In your description of puttanesca, you talk about how it is traditionally made with onions, etc and then I see a cut onion in the photo accompanying the recipe. Just wondering. Thanks! It’s delicious by the way.Reply
Sheena Strain says
Hi Jean, you are right about the onion and I’m so sorry that was missing! I’m going to rework the sauce this week and I’ll get back to you as this was one of my early Instant Pot recipes from a couple years ago so my apologies the sauce did’t turn out as well as you expected, but I’m glad it tasted good. I’m thinking of simply removing the chicken once it’s pressure cooked and simmering the sauce to reduce it for about ten minutes or so. The difficulty with pressure cooking is that we can’t do it in any sort of thickened sauce (especially with tomatoes) or we’ll get that dreaded ‘burn’ notice and it won’t come to pressure, so we have to thicken it more afterwards.
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Ann C says
Hi Sheena – I’m definitely looking forward to giving this recipe a try. I like the anchovies in a puttanesca sauce; if I wanted to include them, at what point would you recommend adding them? Thanks! Ann
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Sheena Strain says
Hello Ann,
That sounds like a delicious addition! I would try adding the anchovies along with the tomatoes and see how that works.
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Michele says
Do you think you can make extra thighs with the recipe since it seems like there will be extra sauce? Have you tried doubling the recipe to make a larger portion at one time? Your recipe looks really yummy and I can’t wait to try it.
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Sheena Strain says
Hi Michele, I’m pretty sure if the size your pressure cooker can accommodate the extra chicken thighs then you can simply add more!
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Lei says
We really enjoyed this, thank you!! We had plenty of saucey goodness leftover and we couldn’t bear to toss it… do you see any reason why we couldn’t use it to make another batch? We weren’t sure if the tomatoes would overcook. Or should we just cook chicken separately and combine it?Reply
Sheena Strain says
I’m so glad you liked it! I might cook the chicken separately and just top it with the extra sauce
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Caitlyn says
So good! Definitely will be making this again.Reply
Sheena Strain says
I’m glad you liked it Caitlyn, thanks for letting me know! 🙂
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Sabrina says
what a wonderful recipe, thank you and thank you also for the additional recipes like the Korean ribs, really nice and love how easy that is, thank you for all!Reply
Sheena Strain says
Hi Sabrina, do glad you like it!
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Ann says
I just got an Instant Pot and am browsing recipes. I find very few of them have correct timing in that so many (including this one) call for “natural release” which, from what I can tell, adds about 15 mins. When you put that in the timing for the recipe, the total time on this recipe is closer to 40 mins. This makes a difference when timing dinner & sides. It may require at least another glass of wine for prep time, too… so it’s not all bad!
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Sheena Strain says
Hi Ann,
I went back and forth about this when I started this site and there’s not an easy way to input the timing like that, if I had a recipe widget especially designed for the pressure cooker it would include the approximate time to pressure, the cook time, and the approximate time for pressure release, but as it is it only has one slot for timing. So for the moment, I prefer to just have the cook time at pressure listed as most folks know to add on 5-10 min at the start and another 5-10 at the end.
However, your point is duly noted and has prompted me to ask the lady that helps me with my techy stuff to see if she can adjust the widget to add in timings the way you suggest but it may not be possible – I’ll let you know! 🙂Reply
Deb says
I love Chicken Puttanesca so I can’t wait to give this recipe a go, thanks!!Reply
Sheena Strain says
Hi Deb, I hope you love it!
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Jackie says
So is it thighs or breasts? Ingredients show thighs and then step 2 says breasts. Is it just preference?
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Sheena Strain says
Hi Jackie! you’re right, that was my mistake, it should say thighs, I’ve corrected it. You could try breast meat but the cook time might be different, I’ve only made it with thighs as I think they are nicer in the pressure cooker.
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