Chinese Cashew Chicken
This Chinese Cashew Chicken is inspired by the takeout classic. It’s loaded with chicken, cashews and green onions, all coated in a perfectly balanced sweet and savory sauce. Plus, to make it a full meal, you have the option to add veggies and rice pot-in-pot.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Cook your main, rice, and veggies in the same pot with this quick and tasty cashew chicken Instant Pot recipe.
We have been getting requests for this recipe ever since we posted our Rosemary Cashew Chicken (which is delicious in a creamy, herby, totally different way).
It took us a while to get it just right, but we’re confident you’ll love this recipe!
We love how flexible this meal is—you can really make it stretch by adding lots of healthy stir fry veggies.
Using the pot-in-pot method makes it easier to get a complete meal on the table! The chicken cooks in the flavorful sauce below, while the rice is steamed in a pan above.
Best of all, cooking it this way means everything is ready at the same time!
✅ This easy recipe will work in any brand of electric pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot, Ninja Foodi, Cosori, or Power Pressure Cooker XL.
Frequently Asked Questions about Chinese Cashew Chicken
There’s a huge variety in the ways that Chinese restaurants near us serve this meal. At some, if you order Chinese Cashew Chicken, you’ll get a dish that’s just chicken and cashews and green onions. At other restaurants, this dish comes packed with stir fry veggies.
We tested it both ways, and we liked it both ways. So we thought we’d write the recipe with enough flexibility to make it easy to customize to your tastes.
You don’t, it can just be a time saver. If you have rice that is already cooked, or want to cook it your favorite way, you can just adjust use a quick release instead of a 10 minute natural release.
Store cashew chicken in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days.
Note: The cashews don’t reheat well. If I think I’ve made enough I’ll have left overs, I’ll add the cashews to individual servings and save the rest for leftovers.
Want more in-depth information about making this recipe? You can now find it below the recipe card.
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Chinese Cashew Chicken
Ingredients
- 1½ pounds about 2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and diced into small bite-sized pieces
- Freshly ground salt and black pepper
- ¼ cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
- ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- ½ to 1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce to taste
- 3 tablespoons honey
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons cold water
- ½ cup cashew halves and pieces plus more for garnish
- Sliced green onions divided into white parts sliced thin and green parts cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
Optional veggies:
- Chopped broccoli florets
- Sliced carrots or matchstick carrots
- 1 can 8 oz sliced bamboo shoots, drained and rinsed
- 1 can 8 oz sliced water chestnuts, drained and rinsed
- Sugar snap peas
- Red bell peppers seeded and cut into very thin strips
Optional pot-in-pot rice:
- 2 cups rice
- 2 1/2 cup water
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Salt and pepper the diced chicken to taste. Set aside.
- Whisk together the chicken broth, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, chili garlic sauce, and honey, until smooth. Set aside.
- Select Sauté to preheat the pressure cooking pot. When hot, add the vegetable oil, and the diced chicken, and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the garlic and green onion whites and cook for 30 seconds more. Pour the soy sauce mixture into the pot and stir to ensure that no browned bits remain on the bottom of the cooking pot.
- If you are making the rice pot-in-pot, in a 7-inch round cake pan, stir together the rice, water, and salt. Place a trivet above the chicken in the pressure cooking pot. Use a sling to carefully lower the cake pan onto the trivet.
- Lock the lid in place. Select High Pressure and 4 minutes cook time. When the cook time ends, turn off the pressure cooker. Allow the pressure to release naturally for 10 minutes, then use a quick pressure release. When the valve drops, carefully remove the lid.
- Use the sling to carefully remove the pan of rice from the cooking pot. Cover and set aside. Remove the trivet.
- In a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch and cold water until smooth. Add the slurry to the pot. Select Sauté and simmer, stirring constantly, until the liquid thickens.
- If using, gently stir in the vegetables. Return the lid to let the veggies steam for 3 to 5 minutes until they reach your desired tenderness. Open the lid and give everything a gentle stir to combine, then add the cashews and remaining green onion.
- Serve the chicken over the rice, garnished with additional cashews and green onions, as desired.
Nutrition
This is one of our favorite Chinese chicken recipes. If you love it, be sure to try our Instant Pot Kung Pao Chicken, Instant Pot Honey Sesame Chicken, and Instant Pot Teriyaki Chicken.
INGREDIENTS YOU NEED
Don’t be intimidated by the ingredient list. This meal is easy to make and flexible on ingredients.
- Boneless skinless chicken breasts: We like this diced into bite-size pieces to make it easy to serve and to line up the cook times.
- Chicken broth: We prefer reduced-sodium broth.
- Soy sauce: We also prefer reduced-sodium soy sauce. We use Kikkoman brand.
- Rice vinegar: Rice vinegar seems to come in two versions: regular/natural and seasoned. As far as I can tell, the seasoned simply adds salt to it. We generally buy regular rice vinegar.
- Sesame oil: This oil packs a powerful flavor. You can omit it if you don’t have it on hand, but the finished dish will not taste the same.
- Chili garlic sauce: This sauce adds so much flavor to the finished dish! If you’re not sensitive to spice, we love adding extra as a garnish. We find it in our supermarket’s Asian foods section; however, you can also buy chili garlic sauce on Amazon.
- Honey: Honey is essential to the flavor profile of this dish. In a pinch, you can substitute agave 1:1, but the flavor will be different.
- Vegetable oil: You can sub this oil for another high-smoke point oil like avocado oil. We opted not to use sesame oil because it can scorch easily.
- Garlic: We call for 2 large cloves, but feel free to add more to taste.
- Cornstarch: Cornstarch and water are the classic thickener for Asian stir fry dishes. Be sure to use cold water and stir really well so no lumps remain to ensure your sauce is silky smooth.
- Cashews: We tested this with both regular and lightly salted cashews. I really loved the taste with the regular cashews, but it was too salty for the rest of my family.
- Green onions: Prep these to your preference. Some serve them in 1-inch lengths cut on a diagonal. Others dice them finely and incorporate them into the whole dish.
- Veggies: While you can serve this dish with just the chicken and cashews, we love adding lots of stir fry veggies to this dish. We listed our favorites, but you can mix it up however you like. (A bag of frozen stir fry veggies is also a great option!)
- Chow mein noodles: These little chow mein noodles add an amazing texture to the finished meal. (These “crunchies” also are the secret to getting my youngest to eat this dinner.) They’re optional, but if you’ve never tried them I encourage you to!
- White rice: We love to make rice pot-in-pot with our Asian take-out meals, so we’ve included instructions for this. We generally use long-grain white rice. We’ll use Basmati or Jasmine when we can get on sale—the cook time is the same for all white rice.
Important Tips for Making Chinese Cashew Chicken in an Instant Pot
In traditional recipes, the cashew chicken is coated in flour or cornstarch and then stir fried. However, flour-coated meat doesn’t work well in a pressure cooker—the flour settles to the bottom and causes a burn notice.
For our version, we skipped the flour. Honestly, we don’t miss it at all!
We just used the cashew halves and pieces because they were less expensive. Plus you get more cashew in each bite.
MORE Asian-Inspired Recipes
We love making quick chicken dinners like this in the Instant Pot. Try these others next:
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This Cashew Chicken in the instant pot looks delicious.
Protein, Veg, Nuts, sweet & savoury in One Pot cooking! What more could you ask for?
Could maybe use beef as well?
“It took us awhile to get it just right.” That’s one thing I admire about you both. You don’t necessarily post your first try at a recipe. Sometimes a first attempt at a new recipe is wonderful; but sometimes a recipe will need a little tweaking…and you two take the time to do the tweaking. I think there’s only been one time I thought one of your recipes needed a little changing and I’ve long forgotten which one it was. Thanks for working on a recipe until it’s perfect. Does that mean I’d never change one of your recipes? No of course not, but I know a recipe will be good “as written.” I suspect it helps that any recipe will be tried with a wide variety in ages of those eating it.