Pressure cooker cajun chicken pasta

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I absolutely love using my pressure cooker for those days when I want to meal prep with ease, or make a super fast dinner for my family during a busy time of day. This pressure cooker cajun chicken pasta is a dish that we’ve been enjoying a lot recently.

This easy creamy chicken pasta recipe is perfect to batch cook for lunches, or just make for a tasty and fuss free dinner. The sauce is lovely and packed full of flavour too and this is a really enjoyable meal.

I have a lighter cajun chicken pasta that I love to make, when I’m watching the calories, but this recipe is a little more rich and indulgent. Perfect for a date night dinner at home.

What I love about using the pressure cooker is that you really don’t need to be a great cook. You can lightly brown a few items in a pan and then you just throw all of your ingredients in, give them a stir and set it to cook.

Cajun cuisines are all about bringing together bold flavours with vibrant spices and I absolutely love cajun seasoning with chicken. It brings a hit of flavour, and spice, without being overpowering.

The addition of soft cheese and cream in this recipe helps to make it a delicious creamy dish that is packed full of flavour.

Spending hours preparing a meal doesn’t always fit into my schedule and it takes just a few minutes to prepare the ingredients for this tasty meal. I use a chopper to save tie and sometimes swap the garlic cloves for garlic puree, just to save a little more time and effort.

You can easily adapt the spice level of this recipe by adding more cajun seasoning if you’re a big spice fan, and less if you’re not.

I use a Ninja Foodi OL750UK, which is a 15-in-1 model, featuring a pressure cooker setting. You can use a stand alone pressure cooker or Instant Pot if this is what you have. The measurements should be the same.

Ingredients for making cajun chicken pasta in the pressure cooker:

300g dry pasta

350g chicken breast

15ml vegetable oil

2 peppers

2 onions

3 cloves of garlic

400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 chicken stock cube

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 tablespoon cajun seasoning

100ml single cream

60g soft cream cheese

500ml water

Optional: 30g parmesan cheese

How to make pressure cooker cajun chicken pasta:

Mince or grate your garlic cloves.

Dice or thinly slice the peppers and onions.

Chop the chicken breast into slices.

Make up 500ml of chicken stock using the water and chicken stock cube.

Heat up the vegetable oil in either the pressure cooker pot or a pan on your hob if your pressure cooker doesn’t have a brown or sauté setting.

Brown the peppers, onions and chicken in the vegetable oil.

Place the browned peppers, onions and chicken into your pressure cooker pot.

Next add the dry pasta, garlic, chopped tomatoes, black pepper, paprika, cajun seasoning and chicken stock to the pressure cooker pot.

Stir well to mix the ingredients together.

Set to cook on high pressure for 5 minutes.

Quick release the steam.

Add the cream cheese and single cream then stir through. Add the grated parmesan cheese here if you’re using this.

Serve and enjoy.

I love to add a little sprinkle of thinly sliced basil to mine!

Can you adapt this into a cajun chicken pasta bake? 

You could! Follow my recipe here and then transfer to an overproof dish, sprinkle with cheese on the top and then cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 180C (360F approx).

A mixture of cheddar and parmesan works very well for this recipe.

I’ve also turned this pressure cooker cajun chicken pasta into an air fryer pasta bake and it turned out to be absolutely delicious!

Want to add some extra flavour?

Using some chorizo or spicy sausage would work very well in this dish, plus it would be a great extra source of protein too.

I would lightly fry the chorizo with the peppers and onions so the lovely oils can be released and go back into the dish.

Looking for a different seasoning blend?

Fajita seasoning or peri peri seasoning would both work great too! I like to cook up a load of air fryer peri peri chicken at the same time, so we have a bit of variety for our lunches!

Can you use double cream? What about evaporated milk?

If double cream is what you have to hand then you can use this. It has a thicker consistency, so may change the creaminess of the dish slightly, but it won’t make a significant difference in the quantities used for this recipe.

Likewise if you used heavy whipping cream this would make it a thicker consistency too. Ideally single cream works best, but I love keeping food waste minimal in my home, so I’d just use what I had to hand.

What peppers work best?

I love red pointed peppers or red bell peppers. Orange and yellow work great too. Personally I avoid green peppers for this recipe and stick to using them in things like slow cooker chicken curry.

What to serve with cajun chicken pasta?

Personally I think this is a delicious dish on it’s own, but if you want to stretch the meal a little further, or perhaps feed a crowd on a budget, then I love to make either a garlic bread baked in the oven or an air fryer garlic bread. Air fryer roasted tomatoes go great with cajun chicken but mostly I just love all things smothered in garlic butter!

This pressure cooker cajun chicken pasta is absolutely delicious. Packed full of flavour, easy to make and pretty low priced per portion too.

I really hope you enjoy this tasty recipe as much as we enjoy it in our house. The spicy flavours of this cajun dish work really well and it is great both as a standalone dish or served with a lovely salad.

Want to use an alternative cut of chicken?

Skinless chicken thighs work great for this recipe. They’re one of the most flavour packed cuts of chicken, easy to come by in UK supermarkets and super simple too.

If you have fussy eater in your home then they will likely be a fan of boneless skinless chicken breasts instead, which is why I tend to use these for a lot of my recipes. Any time I’m making air fryer chicken recipes I use chicken breast, and they’re still packed full of flavour.

You could use chicken drumsticks, chicken wings etc but you’d want to strip the meat from the bones, and remove the skin, after cooking. If I only have bone in chicken then I would strip this before cooking, just to avoid any bones or skin ending up in the final dish.

Can you use chicken broth instead?

If you’ve got the time to make yourself a delicious chicken broth, or have access to buy one locally, then this would be a great way to bring some additional flavour to this dish. Chicken broth is packed full of nutrients and more beneficial to add to your meals over making your own stock up with a stock cube.

Want to use olive oil instead of vegetable oil?

I like to use vegetable oil in my Ninja Foodi, because it has a higher smoking point. If you’re going to use olive oil instead then I would recommend keeping the heat level pretty low, 3 or 4, and it shouldn’t overly smoke.

Want to use milk instead of cream?

I would recommend adding the milk at the end, like the cream and soft cheese, and then using the sauté mode just to cook it a little more, on level 1-2, so nice and low, to help thicken it up slightly.

Want to use creme fraiche instead of cream cheese?

You can substitute this at a 1:1 ratio with no issues.

How to make pressure cooker creamy cajun pasta:

Note: All calorie information is for demonstration purposes only and is based on the specific uncooked ingredients that I used when creating the recipe.

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