When you cream-ify and green-ify a sauce with the most flavorful and magical touches, you’ve just bore witness to the Green Goddess.
Green Goddess is a common cream cheese-based spread that is amazing in a number of ways. It can be stuffed in mushrooms caps, emulsified into a dressing, turned into a pasta and now serves as the ultimate sauce to dress juicy chicken cutlets.
But make no mistake, as rich and divine as this dish is, it’s one of my easiest recipes.
Instant Pot Green Goddess Chicken
Yield: 6
Instant Pot Green Goddess Chicken
When you cream-ify and green-ify a sauce with the most flavorful and magical touches, you've just bore witness to the Green Goddess.
Prep Time
5 minutes
Cook Time
5 minutes
Additional Time
15 minutes
Total Time
25 minutes
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 - 1/3 cup all-purpose flour with a few dashes of salt, pepper and garlic powder whisked in (you can also use coconut or quinoa flour for a lighter touch and to make it Keto)
- 2 pounds chicken breasts, thinly sliced into 1/4-inch cutlets
- 2 tablespoons salted butter or ghee
- 16 ounces sliced baby Bella or white mushrooms
- 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
- 5-8 ounces baby spinach
- 8-ounce brick cream cheese, cut into 8 cubes (for easy melding)
- 1 cup pesto sauce (See Jeff's Tips)
- 10 ounces frozen peas (optional)
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
Serve Over:
Instructions
- Dredge (coat) the chicken cutlets in the flour mixture on both sides so it's fully and lightly dusted.
- Add the olive oil to the Instant Pot, hit Sauté and adjust to the More or High setting. After 3 minutes of heating add the chicken in batches (about 2 at a time will fit) and sear on each side for 1 minute until lightly browned. Use tongs to remove the seared chicken to a plate to rest. Repeat until all the chicken is seared.
- Add the butter. Once melted, add the mushrooms and sauté, stirring often for about 3 minutes until softened and cooked down.
- Add the broth and return the chicken to the pot, resting it on top of the mushrooms and broth in a crisscross fashion. Top with the spinach. Secure the lid, move the valve to the sealing position, hit Keep Warm/Cancel and then hit Pressure Cook or Manual for 5 minutes at high pressure. Quick release when done.
- Use tongs to remove the chicken to a serving dish. Hit Keep Warm/Cancel and then hit Sauté so it's on the More or High setting. Once it begins to bubble stir in the cream cheese, pesto, Parmesan and frozen peas (if using - and don't worry about them being frozen. The heat of the sauce will thaw them immediately). Once the cream cheese is melded into the sauce, hit Keep Warm/Cancel to turn the pot off.
- Drape the sauce over the chicken in the serving dish (you'll likely have a good amount of sauce leftover too). Feel free to serve the chicken over a bed of pasta, zoodles, rice, veggies or just on its own.
Jeffrey's Tips
If you want to save time and use store-bought pesto, Costco's is by far my favorite. But if you wish to make your own which is also delicious, add the following to a food processor and blend until puréed:
- 1 1/2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
- 3 cloves garlic, lightly smashed
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil. (You can also use 1 ripe avocado, peeled and pitted with 2 tablespoons cold water)
- 1/4 cup pine nuts, walnuts or pistachios
LINDA T ETZEL
I believe you forgot to add the spinach in the printed recipe (step 4)
Jeffrey
Ah! Fixed!
Vern Fraser
Wonderful recipe but as a male following your fantastic recipes, how does it make me feel like “a goddess”? First faux pas ever Jeffrey! Keep them coming.
LaLa
Delicious dish!
I hate mushrooms, so I used a large onion in its place. Cut it up into medium-sized pieces and added a splash of Worcestershire sauce while sautéing. It came out amazing!
Highly recommended!
Tony
Can I use Boursin instead of cream cheese?
Jeffrey
Live dangerously.
Tony
Lol
Glenn L Hall
We made the green goddess chicken dish today and must have missed something
We put the chicken and sauce over zoodles
the sauce was extremely watery, not creamy at all
We had to thicken the sauce with cornstarch.
Any idea what went wrong?
Jeffrey
Sorry to hear. I’m thinking you missed a step because this is a very rich and creamy sauce.
Mary
I’m going to make this because it sounds delicious. It has cream cheese and parmesan cheese, which In love.
KayKay
We made this today. For me it is a fairly labor intensive recipe as I had to cut the chicken into cutlets and to slice up the mushrooms. The sauce is rich and creamy but not too thick. My first time using one of your recipes. There was a lot of sauce and chicken left so we will freeze for a quick meal later. Thank you for your efforts.
Carroll
RE: Cutting mushrooms
If you have one of those slicers for hard boiled eggs, cut the mushrooms with that. Fast and easy and they’re all evenly sliced. 😀 Also works well with strawberries.
Alison R
I have chicken thighs. Would I change the cook time if I used them instead of the breasts?
Linda
Could I use chicken tenderloins? Would everything remain the same?
Georgia
I made this last night, and we loved the flavor. However, we were a little disappointed that the spinach pretty much disintegrated and disappeared. Would the dish cook correctly if I left the spinach out until the step of melding in the cream cheese? That way the spinach would just wilt but still be there.
Jeffrey
Spinach does cook down/wilt into nothing. And you can absolutely do that – it will just be a bit more textured when biting into it.
Debby Shadoff
This was delicious! I added some zucchini for more green and it was yummy!