Using chicken thighs and a creamy ranch cheese sauce with spinach, this dish is simple to prepare in the Instant Pot. Serve with Cheddar cheese and more bacon, if preferred, over top of mashed potatoes or cauliflower rice.
| Prep Time: | 5 mins |
| Cook Time: | 40 mins |
| Additional Time: | 5 mins |
| Total Time: | 50 mins |
| Servings: | 6 |
Ingredients
- 4 slices bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 ½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, cut into pieces
- 1 tablespoon dry ranch dressing mix
- 2 cups frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
Instructions
- Turn on a multi-functional pressure cooker (such as Instant Pot) and select Saute function. Add bacon once pot is hot and cook to desired crispiness, about 5 minutes. Remove bacon and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Add chicken thighs to pot and season with salt and pepper. Cook in bacon grease until each side is browned, about 2 minutes per side. Remove from pot and set aside.
- Pour in chicken broth and deglaze pot, scraping up all the browned bits. Stir in cream cheese and dry ranch dressing mix; cook until cream cheese has melted, about 3 minutes. Cancel Saute mode.
- Return bacon to the pot and stir to combine. Add chicken thighs and turn until they are covered with cream cheese sauce. Close and lock the lid. Select high pressure according to manufacturer’s instructions; set timer for 12 minutes. Allow 10 to 15 minutes for pressure to build.
- Release pressure carefully using the quick-release method according to manufacturer’s instructions, about 5 minutes. Unlock and remove the lid. Remove chicken and keep warm.
- Select Saute function. Add drained spinach to pot and cook until warmed. Return chicken and turn until well covered with sauce and cook for 1 minute until warmed through.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 359 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 4 g |
| Cholesterol | 113 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 24 g |
| Saturated Fat | 12 g |
| Sodium | 632 mg |
| Sugars | 1 g |
| Fat | 27 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This is a family favorite! But we use organic products and fresh spinach! Much better for you and better tasting on the spinach. Cooking tip die spinach: Once you release the pressure pull the chicken out carefully onto a plate. Add the bag of spinach and stir a few times. Add chicken back and you’re ready to serve. Also! If you don’t like the additives in the ranch seasoning. A simple solution is: 1 tablespoon garlic powder 1 tablespoon onion powder 1.5 teaspoons of dill You don’t need any milk power of any kind. The cream cheese is enough. Enjoy!!
Mt family love this recipe! I make at least once a month.
Delicious. I only had boneless skinless chicken tenders and kale instead of spinach. Cooked 3 min under pressure. Natural release for 5. Then put kale in with chicken and sauce once finished pressure cooking with sauté function until the kale turned bright green. No leftovers! Chicken was cooked perfect!
This was yummy, and easy to do.
This recipe has huge ranch flavor and the sauce is incredible over mashed potatoes! The chicken was very tender. I did use fresh spinach and it worked great. The sauce thickened after a few mins on the plate. Fantastic recipe!
Absolutely delicious recipe that’s also looks impressive when served. It makes a beautiful presentation and will impressive your family and guest. Like others, the only thing I did differently was to use bone-in thighs and it turned out perfectly. My husband was licking his plate!!!! It’s a keeper!!!
Guys in my house enjoyed it. Might cook the chicken to be shredded first, and then make the sauce and spinach. Great recipe to tweak.
I “sort of” made it. I had a boneless skinless breast that I didn’t know what to do. I had poached it but from there, what was I to do with it? Thought this would be good. Here lies the problem: (1) hubby hates chicken to begin with, but I still make it sometimes but he also has dental problems so food can’t be chunky so it wound up being shredded; (2) I didn’t have the Ranch Dressing packet-thought I did but…;(3) hubby also hates “white” sauces so I had to disguise it with a little Kitchen Bouquet. Otherwise, I had the cream cheese and I used some Bleu Cheese dressing about a tbsp and a tsp. of Ranch that came with his wings last week. I also added onions. He didn’t put much on his plate and when I asked how it was, he said “it’s edible.” LOL I have a weird hubby. The list of things he doesn’t like would fill a book. I will make it again with all the proper ingredients next time. Yeah, i’ll make it again but still have to disguise the sauce. I liked it. I had a little left over so I will try it on my son when he comes home. He’ll eat anything.
It was so yummy! Even my 2 year old grandson loved it!
Between AllRecipes app continuously resetting the ingredient list from 2 servings to 6, and the Insta-Pot not working the way the directions say it’s supposed to, this dinner took nearly twice as long to prepare and in my opinion was not very good. My son pronounced it “ok” and ate his dinner, so I guess we will be trying it again at some point. Prior reviews were pretty spot on about adding extra bacon though.
I don’t have an Instant Pot, so I did everything on the stove top, then put it in a chicken roaster pan at a low temp for an hour and a half. WE LOVED THIS! I was tempted to throw some fresh mushroom slices in, but I like to follow a recipe the way it is printed first time trying it. So, tomorrow night with the leftovers, I will saute onions and mushrooms and add it.
It was great. Used fresh chopped up baby spinach, and bacon drippings from already cooked bacon. Then added cooked bacon. (We cook bacon or sausage ahead of time so we have grab and go food for breakfast through the week).Oh…also only did 10 min pressure instead of 12, because of less chicken.
This was great! I used bone in thighs and took the skin off. I added some bacon bits as I did not have any bacon on hand. I topped riced cauliflower with the ranch/cream cheese sauce. Thank you for the recipe, this is a keeper!
Overall tasty and easy to make. I forgot to bring cream cheese to room temp and it clumped when adding it.
So good and so easy! I substituted the frozen spinach with 6 cups fresh baby spinach and still turned out super yummy.
Next time I won’t use any salt, and use low sodium cream cheese.
deliious but sub. breasts for thighs
Best keto recipe for chicken yet! Excellent as is, but I had a greek spinach salad to go with it so I added a. little Feta cheese to the mix. I also used fresh spinach and chicken breasts instead of thighs
This is a fantastic recipe. I took more than 5 minutes to prep. But this turned out so good. My second instant pot meal. Hubby said to add this to his make it again list.
Excellent. The whole family raved about it. However, I didn’t make it in my Instant Pot. I cooked my in a dutch oven. I removed the cooked bacon but didn’t remove the chicken as directed. I just added everything in the pot (except the spinach). I also added a chopped onion and let it all simmer for 15 minutes. I cooked the spinach in a separate pan and added it at the end. It was yummy.
My family LOVED this. Like others I needed to add more chicken, I used 2 lbs of thighs and 8 slices of bacon. I also used broccoli instead of spinach. Major win with the kids.