Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Instant Pot lemon garlic chicken & rice - 4 WW freestyle points


This satisfying chicken and rice dish is a great weeknight meal and quickly cooks up in the 6 quart Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker.

When made with chicken breasts, it's also only 4 points on the Weight Watchers Freestyle program! The recipe makes 6 servings.

You can also substitute chicken thighs, if you don't care about the points or prefer the taste of thighs. You do not need to adjust the cooking time if you use thighs.

Ingredients:
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp minced garlic
2 cups water
2 tsp of better than bouillon garlic base
1 1/2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup jasmine rice
1 Tbsp dried basil
1 lemon, juiced
salt to taste

Cut chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes. Turn Instant Pot on saute, high and add olive oil. After the pot has heated up, saute the garlic for 2-3 minutes until it's slightly brown.

Pour in the water and add the garlic base. Stir the base in until it's well combined. Add the chicken, rice, basil and the juice of one lemon to the pot. Press cancel to turn off the saute function on the pot.
All the basil was at the top!

Put the lid on the Instant Pot and turn the vent to "sealing." Set the Instant Pot to manual, high pressure for 10 minutes. At the end of the cooking cycle, quick release the pressure.

If there is any residual water in the pot at the end of the cooking cycle, turn the saute function back on and allow the water to cook off before serving. I suggest tasting it and then adding a little salt if needed.



I served it with some bell pepper strips, I was planning to make edamame as a side but I wasn't in the kitchen since my IP was doing all the work and time got away from me!

We had plenty for dinner (I had two servings...) for the two of us and also for good sized lunch portions the next day.



This blog is not affiliated with Weight Watchers in any way. Points were calculated using the official Weight Watchers recipe builder in March 2017. This post contains some affiliate links, if you make a purchase via one of these links this blog will receive a small commission. Thank you for your support.

4 comments:

  1. Is it good to add some chilli and ginger? My husband loves spicy food. Thanks for your nice recipe by the way. It is always great with instant pot for nice meals.

    Zia
    Bleach Spot Carpet Repair

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    1. I don't see why you can't add spice if that's what you like! It's more of a Mediterranean spice palette now but you can add different spices if that's what you like.

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  2. If you made it without the rice, would you cut the water to 1 cup and shorten the time? I prefer brown rice that that just doesn't work usually with recipes like this :(

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    Replies
    1. Honestly I don't know if this recipe would really work very well if you don't use the rice. Part of what gives the dish flavor is cooking the rice with the lemon and garlic. It might be better to look for a recipe that is just chicken cooked in the IP (there are lots!) than try to adapt this one.

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