The Pioneer Woman Swears By This Kitchen Gadget For Perfect Pasta Sauce

A Sunday pasta Bolognese sauce requires time and patience to develop all the rich layers of flavor it's known for, but there is a kitchen gadget that can help you with that. Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's top cooking tips are a must when it comes to pasta sauce, and the entrepreneur and cookbook author shared on Instagram that if you want to get a delicious and quick pasta sauce, you should use your pressure cooker.

Drummond shared her recipe for a meaty short rib sauce on social media. "One of the best pasta sauces I've ever had," she writes. Drummond goes on to explain that it can be made in 3-4 hours on the stovetop, but it takes just 60 minutes of total cooking time in the pressure cooker. Even though low and slow is the gold standard for cooking pasta sauce, the chef's stamp of approval to use an appliance that requires a shorter cooking time but still tastes amazing is a no-brainer.

Ree Drummond sears her seasoned short ribs and then cooks them in a mix of onion, garlic, tomato paste, red wine, whole tomatoes, salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes. After 50 minutes, she removes the short ribs and pulls the meat off the bones before shredding the meat and adding it back into the sauce. It then cooks for another 10 minutes in the pressure cooker. Once done, she adds minced parsley, and voila -– it is ready to serve over pasta or, if you prefer, grits.

How is the pressure cooker able to achieve the same level of yumminess and flavor that cooking on the stovetop for 3-plus hours does? A traditional pasta sauce that uses tomatoes as its base must simmer for hours to thicken and get a beautiful concentration of flavors. Tomatoes are a high-water content fruit, so as they cook, the water evaporates, leaving behind a lush sauce bursting with sweet and tangy notes. This process can take anywhere from an hour to two days. The pressure cooker is a game changer — no more long waits.

As its name so aptly explains, this pot with a lid that seals increases both the pressure and temperature at a rate that forces moisture into foods, making them tender and succulent in a short amount of time. Because you use less liquid in a pressure cooker than you would if you cook something on the stovetop, the flavor is actually richer and more robust. Hence, Ree Drummond dubs her pressure cooker-made sauce "one of the best."

While Drummond cooks her pasta on the stovetop, you can also cook your pasta along with your sauce in the pressure cooker. If you are going to do this, you will need to add a little extra water or stock to the sauce for the pasta to soak up as it cooks. If you forget this and seal your cooker up without the extra liquid, your pasta and sauce will burn, so don't forget. How much extra stock or water do you need? For every cup of pasta, you want to add a half cup of liquid. So, the next time you want a slow cooker pasta sauce quickly, consider using your pressure cooker.