Instant Pot Brown Sugar Garlic Chicken (10 Mins Recipe) - Rasa Malaysia (2024)

FAQs

Why does chicken get rubbery in Instant Pot? ›

Why is my Instant Pot shredded chicken rubbery? Rubbery Instant Pot shredded chicken is usually the result of overcooking the meat.

This dinner staple cooks up perfectly every time in the Instant Pot. You can aim for firm but juicy chicken for cubing, or let it cook a little bit longer for tender shredded chicken.

If you only have water, that will work but you may want to add in chicken bouillon or increase the seasonings. Butter: yes, it's true. Since chicken breasts are so lean, I like to add a bit of fat to the cooking process to keep them so juicy. It's my favorite way to make them!

While all cuts of chicken are fair game for the Instant Pot, thighs are the most forgiving. Because chicken breast is so lean, just a couple of extra minutes of cook time turns them from juicy to overcooked and dry.

If the chicken is hard after cooking, you cooked all the moisture out of it. The juices got left in the pan or pot and/or totally evaporated away.

So can a Crock-Pot cook better chicken than an Instant Pot? Well, it really depends on what you're making. The Instant Pot cooks chicken much faster than its non-pressure counterparts, but the resulting texture isn't going to be the same as what you'd get with a slow cooker or Dutch oven.

While you may cover meat almost completely for a conventional braise, use just enough liquid for the cooker to reach pressure – during pressure cooking the meat will release it's own juice and braise in that flavorful liquid, instead.

You can still pressure cook leaner pieces – like eye of round and top sirloin – but these work best if they've been stuffed, shredded or rolled (with other ingredients). Best cuts of beef to use: Chuck steak, Round Roast, Shoulder, Pot roast, Ribs, Brisket, Oxtail.

It seems odd, since you're cooking it in liquid, but too much time spent in the pot can force moisture out of the muscle tissue into the surrounding liquid, leaving the meat dry and nasty. You have to overcook it a lot for that to happen.

Thus, you end up with hard rubbery egg curds surrounded by that milky liquid which was once contained within the proteins. The same is true with chicken…if it is boiled or cooked too quickly and rapidly, or for simply too long, the proteins contract tightly and squeeze the moisture out.

Does chicken breast get more tender the longer you cook it? ›

Close-up of a woman slicing raw chicken breast meat on a cutting board. Chicken becomes more tender the longer it cooks. Unfortunately, most cooking methods produce extremely dry meat when the chicken is cooked long enough to become tender.