In episode 079 we are making Buffalo Chicken Chili in the Instant Pot. I made this soup for the 2023 Super Bowl, it is PERFECT football food! This will serve about 6-8 people. Load it up with tortilla chips, sour cream and diced avocado. You can also watch Susie make this chili on a 30 minute Pinterest TV episode.
Serve it up with some corn bread for a yummy dinner!
Transcript
Click for the full transcript.
Intro: Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: Okay, I’m going to have to apologize for my little bit of froggy voice today. So in real time as I’m recording this, I live in the Kansas City area and the Kansas City Chiefs just won the Super Bowl. It was so exciting. It was an excellent game. Super fun. Had a big party and actually had perfect timing. I made this Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili for our Super Bowl party, and it was delicious. It is perfect game day food. So unfortunately, the football season is over, but you can use it for other parties, for baseball, for just a fun weeknight dinner or for next football season.
So of course for this recipe, you’re going to want to have an Instant Pot. I actually currently have two Instant Pots because I love it so much and I do a lot of Instant Pot recipes on PinterestTV. So I need two pots so that I can make a recipe and then make a recipe during the show. The pot that I have is the Six Quart Instant Pot Duo Plus, and then I have a seven in one and a nine in one. I have to say that the seven in one is plenty for me. I don’t really use the nine functions. In fact, I don’t really use the seven functions. I use about four of the functions. So save a little bit of money, get the seven in one Instant Pot, if you don’t already have one, it’ll save you about 30 bucks.
The most important feature is that you want to have at least a six quart Instant Pot. Most recipes are going to be written in either a six quart or an eight quart pot. This recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili is going to serve about, it’s tough to say because it depends on, if you’re at a Super Bowl party and you have a lot of other food, it’s going to serve a lot of people. But if it’s just a dinner that you’re doing, it’s going to serve probably about six people. You can double the recipe, but I think if you have just a six quart pot, doubling the recipe is going to be hard because it will fill the pot to the brim. If you’ve worked with an Instant Pot before, you know that in the inside of the pot, there’s that max fill line, and you don’t want to go over that when you’re cooking in the Instant Pot.
Total time to make this recipe is going to be probably about a good 20 minute prep time just because you have chopped onions and peppers and garlic and then the actual pressure cook time is only 12 minutes. Now not calculated in there, of course, is the time it comes to bring your pot to pressure and then the release time.
Tips and Tricks: There’s not a ton of tips and tricks that I’m sharing before the recipe today, but there are two ingredients that I want to talk about briefly. So the ranch packet, it’s that little one ounce envelope of Dry Ranch Mix. I have tried the Aldi brand or off brand or store brands, they’re not quite the same as the Hidden Valley brand. I’m not sponsored by Hidden Valley. I just think that it is definitely a better flavor. So if you see the Hidden Valley ones, grab that.
Then also the buffalo sauce that goes into this recipe. Number one, if you don’t like spicy things, this is not the recipe for you. After the Super Bowl this year, I had somebody email me and tell me that my Buffalo Chicken nachos were too spicy. I’m like, if you don’t like buffalo or you don’t know about buffalo, or you don’t like spicy things, then this recipe is not going to be for you. But the buffalo sauce, Frank’s Red Hot Original, is always good. But I will say I’ve tried the Aldi one and it is just as good, truly. Now you’ll also see buffalo sauce and then you’ll see wing sauce. They will both work, but the buffalo sauce is not going to have as much like oil and butter in it as a wing sauce. The wing sauce is ready to be put on chicken wings and stick to the chicken wings. Like I said, they’ll both work. But if you can find the Frank’s Red Hot Original, it’s delicious.
Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili Recipe: All right, so let’s get on to making this full recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili. You want to start by setting your Instant Pot on saute mode. Once it reads hot, you’re going to add one tablespoon of oil to the pot. Then, you’re going to add in one yellow onion that’s been diced. Three garlic cloves that are chopped. One cup of chopped celery and one bell pepper that’s been chopped. You can use any color; red, green, yellow, orange, they’ll all work here.
So let that saute around for about five to eight minutes. Then you’re going to turn the saute mode off. You’re going to add in two large chicken breasts, and what I like to do here is cut them into four pieces each so that they cook all the way through in your cooking time. Then you’ll sprinkle in that one ounce packet of ranch dressing mix, and then pour in four cups of chicken broth or chicken stock and then three quarters cup of buffalo sauce that Frank’s Red Hot Original that we talked about. Now if you are like, I just want a little bit of spice, you can absolutely adjust this to a quarter cup all the way up to the three quarters. So just add as much buffalo sauce as you think you want. Of course you can always add more at the end if you want to taste it and then see what your heat level is.
Now you’re going to place the lid on your Instant Pot. Turn it, lock that pressure valve to seal and set it to cook either on manual mode, high pressure for 12 minutes, or you can do the meat and stew mode, which is basically the same thing for 12 minutes. After the pressure cook is done, you’ll do a quick release of pressure, which just means you turn that pressure valve to vent and all of that steam will escape.
So at this point we’re going to finish the soup. What you want to do is fish out all eight pieces of that chicken breast and you can chop it or shred it. My very favorite tip for shredding chicken is putting it in your stand mixer with a paddle attachment and it needs to be warm or hot chicken to do this. So put it in your Kitchenaid with a paddle attachment. Buzz it on medium speed for about 15 to 30 seconds and it shreds it beautifully and it’s so, so easy. So shred that up. Set that aside.
Now, in the Instant Pot, you’re going to add your cream cheese. It’s an eight ounce block of cream cheese. I like to cut mine up into one inch blocks so that it melts down into the soup a little bit easier. Usually I’ll take a whisk and whisk it in so that it breaks up and melts down into the soup. Then you’re going to finish the soup by stirring in the shredded chicken. A 14 and a half ounce can of diced tomatoes that’s been drained and a 15 and a half ounce can of great Northern beans that’s been drained. One and a half cups of frozen corn. A third cup of fresh chopped cilantro and then one tablespoon of honey. The honey just balances that flavor and balances all of the spiciness and the tanginess. You’ve got a lot of tanginess in this soup, so that honey just balances everything out. So give it a really good stir, mix it all up, and then let it cool for about 15 minutes and it will start to thicken up as it cools.
So that is the full recipe. Now, in the recipe, I do have troubleshooting for spice levels. If you don’t like things too spicy, like we said, dial back the buffalo sauce. If it’s too late and you already made it too spicy, what you can do is add more cream cheese, or you can stir in a little bit of heavy cream or half and half.
Now, if you have just started the recipe and you’re like, give me all the spice, I want more spice than just the buffalo, you can add one or two chopped jalapenos in the beginning when you’re sauteing the onions and celery and bell.
Now if you’ve already made the chili and you want more spice, of course you can add in a little bit more buffalo sauce. You can add in some ground cayenne pepper or a couple dashes of your favorite hot sauce. You can also serve it with fresh jalapenos. That will be nice and spicy.
Now when you’re serving this Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili, what I like to do is have all of those buffalo toppings ready. So blue cheese, cheese. My favorite is to crumble up some tortilla chips into the soup. I like to have celery sticks, carrots sticks, maybe some cornbread, some different corn breads or Fritos, sour cream, avocados. All of that is delicious piled on top of this soup.
All right, so that does it for today’s recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili. Of course, all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode can be found on momsdinner.net. That is my website where I share all of my recipes. You can save them, print them, and cook right from my website. I would love to have you check them out. I will put links to all of the recipes right in the show notes for you.
Outro: If you are loving these episodes and it’s helping you in the kitchen, I would love to have you rate and review this show in your favorite podcast player. Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
Double Dip: Now it’s time for your Double Dip. So if you are enjoying cooking along with these episodes, then I want you to be prepared for next week’s episode, which of course, comes out every Thursday. So next week we’re making a Veggie Stir Fry. So it’s going to be really similar to a vegetable Pad Thai that you would get from a Thai restaurant.
Yes, you can absolutely make it at home. It’s pretty easy to do and it’s absolutely delicious. However, it does have a longer list of ingredients, but I want to give you all of the ingredients now so that you can have everything you need and cook along next Thursday. I will also put a link in the show notes to next week’s recipe so that you can check it out. You can actually even text yourself the ingredients from the recipe so that when you go to the grocery store, you have it right in your text. There’s a big button right in the middle of the recipe that says, text me the ingredients. So you can use that, especially if you’re on your mobile phone.
All right, so let’s get to these ingredients. You’ll need eight ounces of rice noodles. I like the Thai Kitchen brand. Vegetable oil, broccoli florets, a red pepper, garlic cloves, kosher salt, two large eggs, one cup of bean sprouts and green onions. Then for the Pad Thai sauce, of course you could buy a Pad Thai sauce at the grocery store and be good to go. But if you want to make your own, you’ll want vegetable broth or chicken broth, tamarind paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, creamy peanut butter. Again, garlic, fresh ginger and red pepper flakes. A note about the fresh ginger. So I usually don’t use fresh ginger. What I use are the little frozen cubes. They’re, I think they’re called Dorot Gardens, I get them at Trader Joe’s and they’re little frozen cubes. Each cube is a teaspoon of fresh grated ginger. It couldn’t be easier.
All right, then for the garnish, you’re going to want to have roasted peanuts, cilantro, and fresh lime wedges. That’s it. So I hope you join me next week and make some Pad Thai for dinner on Thursday when you are fresh out of dinner ideas and you’re like, what am I going to make for dinner? You can come back to this podcast, Let’s Make Dinner and cook along with me. I’ll see you then.
Recipes Mentioned
Equipment Recommended
Next Weeks Episode
Find a new audio recipe every Thursday. Follow along to make dinner with me every week.
Next week are making Veggie Pad Thai for dinner! Grab the ingredients and join me.
Follow Along
We would love to have you subscribe to our weekly newsletter! We send out two emails every week. One on Thursday sharing the new podcast episode and one on Sunday sharing all the weeks new recipes, featured recipes, and dinner ideas for the week ahead.
Comments
No Comments