“Hot Mess” Instant Pot BBQ Chicken is for those nights when you feel like a hot mess.
Do you feel like a hot mess sometimes? I certainly do!
But hot mess or not, a gal (and her husband) still need to eat. So I’m always on the lookout for ideas of how to do more, faster, easier and cheaper. That’s where this hot mess of a dish comes in.
What to Use for Instant Pot BBQ Chicken
I get the chicken wings or thighs on sale and in bulk. I season them up, throw it in the pressure cooker, usually when it’s still MOSTLY FROZEN (!), and when the meat is falling-off-the-bone tender, I take it out for any finishing touches and a few minutes under the broiler.
In the end, I’m left with a hot (but very tasty) mess of chicken that we can have for dinner several days.
While I have no doubt you could freeze some of this for another day’s hot mess, we’ve never done it. We are happy with leftovers.
I just change up how it’s served a bit each night or switch sides, and we’ve got dinner for several days with minimum effort. Of course, if you have a smaller Instant Pot than the 8-quart monster I do, you cannot make quite as many at a time. But you should still be able to do enough for a few dinners at a time this way.
Bonus points: This method works well for ribs, too. My husband love-loves these ribs and does not care that they are absolutely a hot mess.
I hesitated a little in sharing this because this really DOES look like a hot mess if I fill up the pot and broil it all at once. But in the end, I figured I cannot be the only one who would be glad to have another easy, if not company-pretty, bulk cooking dinner that doesn’t even require you to fully defrosted meat.
So here goes!
Equipment Suggestions
Ingredients
- 3 pounds chicken drumsticks
- 1/4 cup poultry seasoning
- 1/3 cup sugar free BBQ Sauce
- 1 cup chicken broth (or water)
Instructions
- Defrost Chicken enough so you can get most of the pieces apart, anyway.3 pounds chicken drumsticks
- Sprinkle each piece with Poultry Seasoning and stack in the pressure cooker.1/4 cup poultry seasoning
- Add broth (or water) to the pot.1 cup chicken broth
- Set your lid to "sealing" and cook on high pressure for 25 minutes for frozen or about 16 for thawed chicken. (Partially thawed chicken, choose a time between the two.)
- Allow natural pressure release for 10-15 minutes.
- Manually release the rest of the pressure and preheat the oven on broil.
- Place cooked chicken on a cookie sheet lined with a silicone mat (or parchment paper or foil) and brush on sugar free BBQ sauce.1/3 cup sugar free BBQ Sauce
- Broil the chicken for about 10 minutes, turning midway through.
- Let rest for about 5 minutes and serve.
Recipe Notes
Sometimes, I use sugar free BBQ sauce and sometimes not. Just depends on what I’m in the mood for. But no matter how I season it, I find this falling-right-off-the-bone chicken to be delicious and super-duper easy. Double win for me! And this is true even if you totally crowd the chicken on the cookie sheet for broiling up. I do best with recipes that are hard to mess up. Ha!
Obviously, this isn’t a chef’s recipe, but some of it is at least in the same spirit as MAKING ENDS MEAT because it’s cheap, easy bulk cooking. And who doesn’t need some of that?
Do you make anything similar? How’s it work for you?
