How to Make Spaghetti in Your Instant Pot

Ever stand at your refrigerator around lunch time and wonder what in the world you’re going to fix your kid or yourself?  Yep..that was me this week.  Sometimes the kid eats really well and sometimes all she wants is fruit. Fruit is good but I need to give her more or she’ll be in the kitchen begging me to open the refrigerator before I know it.

Spaghetti. She LOVES spaghetti and so do I.  I was going to fix it on the stove but that involves multiple pans and I wasn’t feeling like dishes so I made it in my Instant Pot. It’s simple and so good!

Now there’s a toss up here, do you want to use meatballs or ground beef?  Maybe you don’t want to use any meat at all.  So I am going to give directions on each (but let’s face no meat is the easiest but I need meat even if just a little in my spaghetti.)

Step 1:

If you choose to use meatballs, all you need to do is add your meatballs to the bottom of of the pot.  If they are frozen and cooked, just add in exactly like that.  If they are fresh, you’ll want them to be cooked first.

If you choose ground beef, you’ll need to push the saute button on my pot and brown the meat. When the meat is finished, you will want to remove the grease. You can also saute onions, peppers and garlic at this time. (My sauce is homemade and has all that in there so I never choose to add more.)

Step 2:

Add in 1 lb of pasta.  If it’s the long noodles, it is best if you break in half.  I prefer noodles that are already broken in half for me. The noodles will just be placed right on top of the ground beef.

Step 3:

It’s time for the sauce.  Pour in one jar of sauce of choice.  I use a quart sized jar which is 32 oz. Make sure you add in at least 24 ounces of sauce right on top of the noodles.

Step 4:

With the jar that you just dumped your sauce out of, fill it back up with water and dump the water into the Instant Pot. You need that water to cook your noodles.  It’s important that the noodles are submerged into the liquid so they won’t stick together.

Step 5:

Place the lid on your Instant Pot, seal the vent and select the manual with high pressure feature on your pot.  Adjust the time to 6 minutes.

When the timer goes off, allow for a natural release of 5 minutes. When 5 minutes is up, release the remaining pressure and open your pot to this…