Easy Chicken Tacos {Instant Pot}
Updated January 29, 2020
Instant Pot Chicken Tacos make a great weeknight meal. They are easy to make and a family favorite! Load these easy shredded chicken tacos up with all of your favorite Mexican toppings and dinner is done!
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Taco Nights Are Our Favorite Nights
Our boys love helping us meal plan and every week they ask for tacos on Taco Tuesdays. They make sure every Tuesday night is a taco night. We love mixing up the kind of tacos we have (steak, salmon, veggie), but one of their all-time favorite tacos are Instant Pot Chicken Tacos. They LOVE them and we love making them because they are so easy! They are the perfect tacos for a busy weeknight.
How to Make Instant Pot Chicken Tacos
The Instant Pot is the key to making these easy chicken tacos. The Instant Pot works it’s magic and can turn out a tasty dinner in no time. I am so glad that pressure cookers are back in style because they make cooking dinner a lot easier. You can put chicken in the Instant Pot and have a dinner ready to go in no time!
We love making these shredded chicken tacos in the Instant Pot because they are juicy, full of flavor, and beyond easy to make. You only need a few ingredients and spices, probably ingredients you already have in your kitchen and all ingredients you can find at any Kroger store.
To start, turn the Instant Pot to sauté and cook the chicken, onion, and garlic for a few minutes. Next, add in Kroger Fire Roasted Tomatoes. We like to use fire roasted tomatoes because they add a ton of flavor to the chicken. We also add chili powder, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. And that is basically it, you just let the Instant Pot do the rest of the work.
When the chicken is done cooking, remove it from the Instant Pot and shred it with two forks. Pro tip, you can also place the chicken breasts in a bowl and shred it with a hand mixer or stand mixer. It will shred up the chicken in no time.
Place the shredded back in the Instant Pot with the juices. Stir and you are ready to make tacos! You want the chicken to be juicy so it has lots of flavor. If there is a little too much liquid, just serve with a slotted spoon, but keep the liquid. You don’t want dry chicken tacos!
Chicken Taco Toppings
The best part of making tacos for dinner, besides the easy factor, the TOPPINGS! We like to load up on taco toppings at our house. We like to put out a variety so everyone can build their own tacos with their favorite ingredients.
A few of our favorite taco toppings include:
- lettuce
- diced tomatoes
- shredded cheese
- cilantro
- avoacdo or guacamole
- red onion or green onion
- jalapeno slices
- pico de gallo or salsa
- lime wedges
- hot sauce
What to Serve with Chicken Tacos
The chicken tacos are good alone, especially with lots of toppings, but if you want to make a bigger meal out of the tacos here are a few side dish recipes that go well with chicken tacos.
- Mexican Rice
- Cilantro Lime Rice
- Black Beans or Refried Beans
- Black Bean Salad
Easy Weeknight Dinner
If you are looking for an easy weeknight dinner, put Instant Pot Chicken Tacos on the menu. They are a family favorite dinner, kids and adults love these tacos.
You can also use the shredded chicken to make chicken taco salads, burritos, quesadillas, tostadas, enchiladas, and more! This easy Instant Pot chicken recipe is a good one! You can use the chicken for more than just tacos, but tacos are always a hit at our house!
If you like these easy chicken tacos, you might also like:
- Instant Pot Honey Sesame Chicken
- Instant Pot Mexican Rice Casserole
- Instant Pot 4-Ingredient Chicken Chile Verde
- Instant Pot Cilantro Lime Rice
Instant Pot Chicken Tacos
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, about 1.5 pounds
- 1/2 small onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 14.5 oz can Kroger Fire Roasted Tomatoes
- 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- Optional Toppings: shredded cheese, chopped lettuce, diced red onion, diced tomatoes, cilantro, avocado, queso fresco, jalapeno, and lime wedges
Instructions
- Set the Instant Pot to sauté and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the chicken and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip the chicken breasts over and add the onion and garlic. Cook for an additional 2 to 3 minutes, stirring the onion and garlic around the chicken breasts so they don’t burn.
- Add the tomatoes with the juice, chili powder, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. Lock the Instant Pot lid in place and set to Manual High Pressure for 8 minutes. When the 8 minutes is up, let the Instant Pot natural release for 10 minutes.
- Open the vent and unlock the Instant Pot Lid. Remove the breasts from the Instant Pot and shred with 2 forks. You can also use a stand mixer or hand mixer to shred the chicken if you wish. Put the shredded chicken back in the Instant Pot with all of the juices. Stir until combined.
- To serve, fill corn tortillas with chicken and desired toppings. Enjoy!
Have you tried this recipe?
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I keep meaning to try fire roasted tomatoes; you’ve convinced me! YUMMY 🙂
They are so good!
So good!
Taco nights are my favorite kind of nights!
If I wanted to do this in the crock pot. What would my cooling times be? Thanks!
Could I do this in the crock pot?
Sure, it will just take longer.
Thank you for a beautiful recipe. Made this tonight for my family and the kitchen smells divine. It tastes even better.
How many servings does this make?
On the recipe I see, it looks like chicken was omitted
Not sure what happened, fixed!
Made these 1-4-18 and thought they were delicious! Instant pot is awesome.
Was in the Army for 20 years. This falls under the category of “Good Shit”. Military speak for freaking awesome.
I’m brand new to the Instant Pot game. I’ve only used it once. Can I used frozen chicken breasts?
Was wondering this as well! I can’t cook meat from raw so was curious if I just need to add more time to cook or not.
I love the simplicity of the recipe and how delicious the meal was. My family really enjoyed it!
Yay! Glad you loved the chicken tacos!
Super easy! My family devoured the tacos. I used chicken thighs instead of breast and served it with chipotle slaw.
Oh my gosh. Made these last night. Amazing! This will be my got to chicken taco recipe from now on.
So glad you loved the tacos!
These look delicious! If I wanted to make these in the crockpot instead, do you know what the cooking time would be?