If you've spent any time on food YouTube in the past year, you've almost certainly stumbled across Andy Cooks. The New Zealand-born chef turned content creator has built one of the most engaged cooking communities online, and it's easy to see why: his recipes are honest, professional, and refreshingly unfussy. His November 2024 Short on Pressure Cooker Chicken and Rice has racked up over 16 million views — a staggering number that tells you everything about how much the world needed this recipe.
Who Is Andy Cooks?
Andy Hearnden grew up in New Zealand cooking alongside his mum from about age three. By his mid-teens he had unenrolled himself from traditional school and signed up for chef school instead — a move that paid off decisively. He went on to cook in professional kitchens across Auckland, London, Sydney, and Melbourne, before channeling decades of real restaurant experience into his YouTube channel. His style is confident but accessible: he treats his audience like capable cooks, while making sure every recipe is genuinely achievable at home.
Why This Recipe Stands Out
Pressure Cooker Chicken and Rice sounds simple — and it is — but the flavors Andy coaxes out of it are anything but ordinary. Chicken thighs get a quick rub with smoked paprika, ground cumin, and coriander before being seared hard to develop a deep, golden crust. From there, everything goes into the pressure cooker together: long-grain rice, chicken stock, sautéed onion, chilli, garlic, and green beans, with the seared chicken laid back on top. Six minutes at high pressure, a quick release, and dinner is done in under 20 minutes.
What makes the Instant Pot perfect for this dish is the way it collapses cooking time without sacrificing depth. The sealed environment traps every bit of cumin and paprika vapor, driving those spices into the rice as well as the chicken. Every grain ends up carrying the flavor of the whole dish — something that would take twice as long on the stovetop.
Key Techniques to Know
- Sear the chicken before anything else. Don't skip it. The caramelized bits left in the pot after browning the thighs deglaze into the stock and color every grain of rice.
- Use a slightly lower liquid ratio than stovetop methods. Andy uses roughly 1.7 parts stock to 1 part rice. Pressure cooking traps moisture, so you won't need as much liquid as you might expect.
- Build your aromatics properly before sealing. Two to three minutes sautéing the onion, chilli, and garlic makes a meaningful difference to the final depth of the dish.
- Quick release works here. Unlike some braised dishes, a careful quick release is fine for this rice — it keeps the grains from continuing to steam and going mushy.
- Fluff from the edges inward. After opening the lid, stir gently from the outside in to fold any condensation back through the rice evenly.
Watch Andy Make It
Andy packs the entire recipe into 60 precise seconds — no wasted motion, no filler. It's the kind of video that makes you put down your phone and head straight to the kitchen.
The Artisan Cookware Connection
This recipe is a genuine showcase for what a pressure cooker can do — and a great case for having Artisan Cookware Co. Stackable Insert Pans in your setup. If you want to run a side of greens or a separate sauce simultaneously, the insert pans let you stack a second dish right inside the same pot under pressure. The stainless steel construction handles the steam environment cleanly and releases food without sticking, making cleanup as quick as the cooking. For a recipe that's built around doing everything in one pot, that's a combination that's hard to argue with.
Andy's Pressure Cooker Chicken and Rice is a lesson in trusting the process: season well, sear properly, build your base, and let the machine finish the job. Follow his lead and you'll have a weeknight dinner that tastes like it took far more effort than it did.
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