Instant Pot pesto chicken pasta in under 30 minutes! It has seasoned chicken, short pasta, broth, and your favorite jarred pesto. A true dump-and-go dinner with almost no cleanup.

The pesto pasta in a bowl surrounded by cherry tomatoes.

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This is one of those recipes that sounds too simple to be worth writing about. That’s until you realize how many people end up with watery, bland pasta because of a couple of easy-to-miss steps. I’ve been there, too, and can tell you how to prevent it.

It’s a genuine dump-and-go dish: seasoned chicken, uncooked short pasta, broth, and pesto sauce. There’s no sautéing and no separate pots. As simple as that sounds, it can be messed up. You can avoid the hiccups by following my steps.

For a mostly hands off dinner with minimal clean-up, this recipe is one of favorites.

Use short pasta, and season your chicken

Use short pasta noodles. Something like penne, rigatoni, rotini, or ziti cooks evenly under pressure and holds the pesto well. Long noodles clump and cook unevenly in the Instant Pot, so skip them for this recipe.

Another is season the chicken before it goes in the pot. Sprinkle on some Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. The broth adds some flavor and the pesto adds more, but neither fixes under-seasoned chicken, and that’s exactly where a flat-tasting dish comes from.

Oh, and one more thing! Taste your pesto before adding it. Some jarred sauces are saltier than others, and between the pesto and the broth, it’s easy to overdo it. I always give it a quick taste before adding it. If you’d rather skip the jar sauce, our homemade pesto sauce works beautifully.

The Instant Pot pesto chicken pasta served in a bowl.

How to Instant Pot Pesto Chicken Pasta

Before you start adding the ingredients to the Instant Pot, cut the chicken into 1-inch chunks (or smaller), and place them into a medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. You can use either chicken breasts or thighs. Cut thighs a bit smaller to make sure they cook all the way through.

Raw chicken, noodles, and broth in the pressure cooker liner.

Add the uncooked pasta to the Instant Pot liner, pour in the broth, and give it a quick stir so nothing’s stuck together. Lay the seasoned chicken on top in an even layer. Don’t stir it in.

Cooked chicken and noodles in the Instant Pot.

Seal the lid, set the valve to sealing, and pressure cook on Manual or High Pressure for 5 minutes, and do quick release when it’s done. If you let it cook too long the chicken will turn rubbery. If you don’t do a quick release, the pasta gets soft and mushy.

The meat and noodles have cooked and pesto has been added.

Don’t skip this step! Drain any excess liquid before adding the pesto. There have been a few times that water stayed in the noodles, and I wasn’t careful enough when removing it. Pouring pesto into a pot of noodles and excess liquid will make it soupy fast.

Everything have been stirred and the pasta can be served.

Stir until everything is well coated, and serve! You can easily double this recipe as long as everything stays below the max fill line. Keep the cook time the same.

Toppings if You Want Something Extra

Parmesan cheese, fresh basil, halved cherry tomatoes, or pine nuts all make tasty toppings.

If you want something slightly richer, stir in some shredded mozzarella before serving. For an easy vegetable add-in, toss a handful of baby spinach in right after draining. The residual heat will wilt it just enough.

For sides, cheesy garlic bread is the obviously a favorite, and a simple fruit salad is light if you want to balance out the richness.

If Your Chicken Is Frozen

A reader in the comments made this with frozen chicken breasts. She mixed the seasoning into the broth instead and cooked for 12 minutes with a 10-minute natural release. That’s good to know if you forgot to thaw the chicken ahead of time. Do keep in mind that most pasta noodles only take 4-ish minutes to cook in the Instant Pot. You could always cook the chicken from frozen, drain, then stir in pre-cooked noodles and sauce.

No Instant Pot?

My crockpot chicken pesto pasta and stove top pesto chicken pastas are similar versions of this recipe with a different cooking method, or browse our other Instant Pot dinner recipes if you want to keep putting your pressure cooker to work.