Hi friends! Happy New Year! I’m so excited to dive into the new year over here with a RECIPE! If you follow along on Instagram then you know that one of my goals for the year to come is to write more over in this space and return to sharing more recipes. Recipe development has always been a love of mine – but when I was working developing recipes full-time in my day job I got a little burned out sharing recipes on E&C. But since most of my time these days does not focus around recipe development, it’s left me with a creative hole that I’m longing to fill here.
I’ve been a little slow to the Instant Pot game – mainly because I had a slow cooker and it worked fine and I couldn’t justify another large appliance in my already packed kitchen. But when my trusty slow cooker broke a couple months ago, I decided to buy this multi-cooker that functions as both a slow cooker and instant pot in one. It also browns/sautees and is basically the appliance of my dreams because it does so many things in a single appliance. Trust me, you really do need this appliance if you’re time-pressed and hate doing multiple dishes.
One meal that we make often at our house is pasta with meat sauce; Joe loves eating it for lunches since it makes great leftovers and the girls are always happy to have noodles in some way, shape or form. And while it’s not hard to make pasta with meat sauce, once you factor in the pan for browning the beef, and then a pot for boiling water and then you combine it all at the end, you’ve gotten more than a couple pans dirty in the process. But! I’m happy to report there is a super easy solution when you use your Instant Pot for doing all the things: Browning the meat and garlic, and cooking the pasta in the sauce without any straining or pre-boiling required. So easy and dare I even say fun to cook this way?! Full recipe below!
Instant Pot Pasta Marinara
Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 6 minutes
Total Time: 16 minutes
Ingredients
1 lb. lean (at least 80%) ground beef
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 oz. dry pasta (I used mafalda noodles but any short pasta would work)
24 oz. marinara sauce
16 oz. water
1 tablespoon heavy cream (optional)
Grated Parmesan cheese for topping
Directions
Set the Instant Pot to the brown/sautee setting. Once heated, add in the ground beef and cook, breaking up and stirring frequently until the meat is fully cooked through. Drain excess grease and return to pot. Add in garlic and cook 2 minutes more.
Add in the pasta, marinara sauce and water; stir. Lock on lid and make sure steam valve is set to closed. Set to “rice/risotto” setting for 6 minutes. Once cooked, release steam valve and let sit two minutes. Remove lid and stir in the heavy cream, if desired. Spoon into bowls and top with grated Parmesan cheese, if desired!