Toss All Your Spaghetti Ingredients In An Instant Pot And Let The Magic Happen
Let's face it: most spaghetti recipes take ample time and preparation in the kitchen. After chopping those essential onions and garlic and browning any meat, you still have to wait for your savory sauce to thicken and those hard thin noodles to boil. Luckily if you're craving a weeknight bowl of spaghetti, you can simplify the cooking process by utilizing your Instant Pot.
To some home chefs, an Instant Pot is a must-have appliance. These multi-use pressure cookers not only have the ability to saute ingredients but they also condense multi-step recipes by doing the majority of the work in a shorter amount of time. Making a complex yet full-bodied spaghetti dinner with your Instant Pot is quite simple and only requires a small amount of prep work. Once the sauce-specific ingredients and hard noodles have been added to those essential aromatics, you'll be able to sit down to a hot meal in record time thanks to your Instant Pot's various cooking features.
Layer your ingredients for Instant Pot spaghetti
Now that you're ready to experience the luxury and ease of Instant Pot spaghetti, you want to make sure you set yourself up for success. All good pasta recipes typically begin by cooking a mixture of onions, garlic, and, if you choose, ground beef. Luckily, you can do this directly in your Instant Pot's included steel pot by using the saute setting. If you want to save time, chop your veggies beforehand and pull out your noodles and canned tomatoes once you start cooking. After your onions and garlic soften and any meat has been added, the process goes by quickly.
From here, add in your crushed or strained tomatoes and dried herbs of choice and stir for a few minutes. Alternatively, if you're using fresh basil or parsley, wait to add these until your spaghetti is complete. Then, almost like you're building a layered dish, add in broken spaghetti noodles, water, or chicken stock for extra flavor, and diced tomatoes. Once you close your Instant Pot and press the pressure cook setting, you should have a full-blown spaghetti meal in under 10 minutes. During that small window of uninterrupted cooking time, you can quickly steam some green vegetables over your stove and set the table. Even though making spaghetti in your Instant Pot is extremely convenient, there are a few ways to prepare this dish even faster, as long as you keep one crucial tip in mind.
Precision is key when adding raw noodles to Instant Pot spaghetti
This spaghetti is a little different from other Instant Pot recipes like taco soup since it requires noodles, which can easily burn while sitting at the bottom of the stainless steel vessel. Whichever recipe you choose to follow, always make sure raw noodles are added only after a base of ingredients along with some liquid have been added to the pot. Once your spaghetti noodles have been broken and placed on top of your recipe's ingredients, additional tomatoes or cooking liquid should be added. Avoid stirring the mixture until the dish has been safely pressure-cooked.
Beyond handling your spaghetti noodles with care, there are additional ways to level up the convenience of this meal. If you always add a pound of ground beef to your spaghetti sauce, which oftentimes takes up to 10 minutes to cook, you can use frozen meatballs instead. After sauteeing your onions and garlic, simply add in however many frozen meatballs you plan on using followed by a bit of liquid. Then, all you need to do is add in the remaining ingredients, including your dry pasta which should be layered directly over frozen meatballs. To save even more time, consider adding garlic and onion powder to your tomato mixture instead of chopping onions and garlic ahead of time. Whatever way you decide to make this traditional dish, using your Instant Pot saves time and produces delicious results.