Thanks for the rave review and tips!

I meant to write “…close enough that it would NOT affect the taste of your soup.”

Marje, if you can’t find rice with a separate seasoning packet you could just rinse the seasoning off the rice with water before cooking it. It might not get 100% of the seasoning off, but close enough that it would affect the taste of your soup.

Rice a Roni comes with seasonings. I don’t know if they’re in a separate package or not. Hopefully yes so you could omit them and just follow Barbara’s recipe.

Lynne you’ve probably already tried Barbara’s suggested change but when eating the soup you don’t taste it and say, “Oh yes this soup has cream cheese in it.” I’d just use the cream cheese and I’d bet you’d like the soup just fine.

I have a little trick for checking whether or not all the ingredients and liquid for a recipe will fit in my Instant Pot Before anything else, I look at the amount of liquid a recipe calls for and put that amount of water plus a little more to account for the non-liquid ingredients in my IP. If it fits, I’m gold; if not I make alterations before finding that all the ingredients will not fit. 

I agree with Barbara, white rice would be fine but I bet your mom wouldn’t even know there was cream cheese in the soup so I’d go ahead and use it. 

Corn sounds like a nice addition to this soup. Would be tasty and add some veggies.

The recipe calls for boneless, skinless chicken breasts but we used boneless, skinless chicken thighs (our preference). Just wanted to mention it in case there are others who also prefer chicken thighs to chicken breasts. I can rarely find turkey parts for sale in the supermarket but I bet this soup would be fabulous with turkey. 

So fun to hear your family loves the soup! Thanks for sharing your tweaks.