Pressure Cooker Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti

I’m here with pressure cooker cheesy chicken spaghetti to add to our long list of easy Instant Pot recipes. If you’re ready to amp regular Instant Pot spaghetti up to the next level with cheese and a bit of a kick this is the next dinner you need to make!

This one pot meal is done in less than 20 minutes!!! You can make it in your Crockpot Express or as one of our Ninja foodi recipes too. That means it’s a real winner. The only real prep is to cube chicken breasts and dice your onion up. The rest you can just dump in, pressure cook, lift the lid and stir!

If you love traditional Instant Pot spaghetti we have instructions for that too. It is the ONLY way I make this “old fashioned” dinner because it takes no time at all. This too requires no boiling and is all cooked in one pot.

The beauty of this method is that the cook time for this one pot spaghetti is like cut in thirds. A busy family like us needs all the help we can get y’all. I often forget what time it is and realize around 4pm that oh, everyone is starving I probably need to figure something out. So there’s that…..

I made my first version which I share at the very bottom of this page. Then on the second go around I switched things around a bit and used Velveeta instead of shredded cheese. That is a substitution you can make too for a much richer flavor. I include both recipes below.

The Velveeta version has more of a kick to it (a bit of heat) because I swapped out some chicken broth for another can of Rotel. You can decide which recipe you’d like to try. They’re both yummy.

No need for cooking the chicken ahead of time. You can just add everything and have it cook together. Use leftover chicken or fresh. Watch the video that’s embedded in this post first. Honestly the longer this sits the better it gets and is amazing the next day as leftovers. And I might even admit that it is better the next day reheated too. 😉

Ingredient Notes

Chicken breasts, boneless, skinless, diced are preferred but thighs are another option if you would rather use dark meat. You need to cut your meat into large bite size pieces for the cook time listed below.

Can you use leftover chicken to make chicken spaghetti?

Absolutely!! It doesn’t matter whether you use precooked or raw chicken into the pot at the beginning. You should use the same cook time just so that the other ingredients cook to al dente and under high pressure it will only get more tender in the cooking process.

For the cheesiness you are going to use about half a block of Velveeta, or I found a package with 5 smaller blocks and used 3 of the 5 pieces, about 10 oz.

Cream of mushroom soup will make it creamy for the sauce + Cream of chicken condensed soup in there. I like 1 can of each but you could use 2 of the same if you prefer. I like this better than cream cheese which others may use.

Rotel I like better than diced tomatoes because it has more heat to it. There is mild, regular and a hot version if you want it to be extra spicy. This is a picture of the above recipe that has real cheese in it versus velveeta and doesn’t have a kick like the first recipe does.

Add Spaghetti noodles, straight I used here but really any shape or variety will work. Add uncooked

If you have an Instant Pot I HIGHLY recommend getting a non stick pot. Great for all recipes & to help prevent burn notice.

Variations

Leave onions and peppers out entirely if you have really picky eaters at home that don’t like any sort of crunchy items. Other version using shredded cheese and very little heat is below this recipe card. After this try our baked spaghetti with meatballsnext.

There is a decent amount of sodium in packaged cheese so salt and pepper is not necessary. There will not be a lack of flavor for sure. Looking for more pressure cooker chicken recipes? We have a ton of them on our site but have listed below a couple favorites that pair with this well.

How Long to Cook Chicken Spaghetti in Instant Pot

You are going to need about 8 minutes to cook under high pressure but that doesn’t include the 10-15 min. it takes to reach pressure initially. You’ll quick release at the end but that takes 1-2 minutes before you can open the lid and serve so all things considered you will need 20 minutes start to finish.

This is a really quick meal especially if you have always made Crockpot Chicken Spaghetti which needs about half the day to get the meat to fall apart tender. Both are delicious though and your family will definitely enjoy either for dinner.

How to Cook Instant Pot Chicken Spaghetti