Healthy Instant Pot Orange Chicken (Paleo)

I’ve been seeing all of these orange chicken instant pot recipes floating around, and I figured there is NO way I won’t botch that. I feel like I’m a pro at the burn notice, and there’s so much sugar! A girlfriend of mine made it last week and said it was a must try, so I took a shot at it.

My recipe is a compilation of a lot of different ideas- I wanted to replace the sugar that you found in most of the recipes with some local honey I had bought, and still wanted it to have some spice to cut into the sweet. I also wanted to add in some onion to cut down on the amount of protein I’d be eating while still letting myself enjoy that tasty sauce, and liquid aminos to replace the salt. This baby turned out delicious, flavor packed, and guilt free. It would be great on top of some rice, but if you try to keep the carbs to a minimum like I do, serving over cauliflower rice would be delicious, or just pair with some stir fry veggies like I did.

Serves: 6
Total Time: 30 minutes
Hands on time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

2 lbs chicken breast, chopped into one inch pieces
2 T olive oil
2 C orange juice
6 cloves minced garlic
1 T minced ginger
1/2 C coconut aminos
1/2 C honey
1 white onion, chopped
2-3 T cornstarch (sub arrow root powder for Paleo)
1 orange, zested
Red pepper flakes to flavor

Toppings

Green onion
Sesame seeds

Directions

• Heat the olive oil in the instant pot and then brown the chicken.
• Add in the onion and saute.
• While the chicken and the onion cook, mix 1 C of the orange juice with the garlic, ginger, coconut aminos, pepper flakes and 3/4 of the orange zest and honey in a small bowl.
• When the chicken and onion are ready, add the mixture in and secure the lid.
• Pressure cook on high for 5 minutes, then do a quick release
• Mix 2T of the cornstarch or arrowroot powder with 2T of orange juice to create a thickening slurry.
• Set to saute on low and add in the slurry.
• Saute for around 5 minutes or until the sauce is thick enough. It will get thicker as it cooks, so don’t keep adding cornstarch. If it still needs cornstarch at the end of the 5 minutes, go ahead and sprinkle in a bit more, giving it a good stir.
• Serve with a sprinkle of remaining zest, sesame seeds and green onion.

*For the veggie side I used the stir fry mix from Costco and added liquid aminos, garlic and some fish sauce for a bit of flavor.