For years Pineapple-Pepper Chicken in the slow cooker was an absolute family favourite. It’s a dish that is very easy to pull together and, while not quite a ‘dump meal’, is also pretty versatile. The chicken can be served over cooked rice or noodles and you can use either boneless chicken breast or boneless chicken thighs as the basic protein. After some experimentation we’ve decided that chicken thighs are better than breasts. They offer more flavour and stay moist even though the dish is being simmered for hours.

I still go at least once a week to my slow cooker. It’s an absolute must have ‘Veteran Tool‘. This valuable kitchen appliance saved me countless times when the kids were younger and we were a family constantly on the move. Now that those kids are grown and largely living somewhere else I’ve been trying to cook for two more often in stead of four. I found I needed something smaller… you just can’t make a dish for two in a six quart slow cooker.

My beloved figured this out long before me and decided that if I was going to keep making certain slow cooker favourites I’d need something smaller. Enter my 3 1/2 quart Instant Pot which is a terrific update on the old technology of my old Crock Pot. Aside from the high and low settings of a traditional slow cooker, my instant pot has a wide variety of additional functions including Sauté which I ordinarily embrace enthusiastically. This dish is every bit as successful in the Instant Pot as my old Crock Pot so I’d have to say the switch is a Veteran Move for anyone who wants to keep making the old favourites but in a smaller quantity… give it a try!

A side note: the photos below are actually for a double portion which I decided to try to make in my 3 1/2 quart pot… so I didn’t use the Sauté function… I browned the chicken and brought the pineapples to a boil in their own juices the old fashioned way on top of the stove. But. it works just as well right in the Instant pot as long as it has the saute feature,