Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs

Has your life been changed by an Instant Pot yet? It took me a long time to finally get onboard largely because I was near maxed out on my kitchen space and didn’t want it to take up anymore room. However; I threw it out as an idea for a Christmas gift this last year because we are building a house and will have a bigger kitchen soon. My husband jumped on it and I am now the proud owner of an Instant Pot.

After a few trial and error recipes and overcoming the learning curve, it has quickly become one of my favorite kitchen appliances. So much so in fact, that it made the short list of items to come along after we packed up all our things in preparation for our move to said new house mentioned above. You see, our apartment lease was up and rather than renew or go month to month for the short month before we move into our new home, we opted to Airbnb it in the interim. As it turns out, it was a dang good thing I brought the Instant Pot along because we don’t actually have a full service oven in the Airbnb. Rather, it is just a glorified, countertop toaster oven. Long story short: I’m about to become much better friends with my Instant Pot than I already am.

Spaghetti is my husband’s favorite food, well besides Breyer’s Chocolate Ice Cream that is. He has a very low tolerance for regularly repeating the same dish – as in we can’t have anything twice within the same month or two even. Except spaghetti. We could eat spaghetti weekly and he’d be a happy camper. I was a little leary to try it in the Instant Pot because how much easier can making spaghetti really get? Turns out the Instant Pot does make it marginally easier but also manages to elevate it in the process. Serve it up with some delicious garlic bread and a nice side salad and you are good to go! If I’m being honest though, time and life dependent it sometimes ends up just being the Spaghetti – and generally everyone involved is okay with that.

The sauce to noodle ratio is just perfect here. The noodles can be clumpy sometimes, so I try to stagger them a little bit when I put them in to minimize that. I use pre-made frozen spicy Italian Meatballs here because I’m an HEB fangirl and they have really delicious ones. In fact, HEB may be one of the reasons I’m slowly converting to a Texan. You would be absolutely fine to make your own, although I would suggest pre-freezing them and still using them frozen so that they hold their shape a little better and you don’t have to adjust the cooking time.

Without further ado, here is all you need to know about making Spaghetti and Meatballs in the Instant Pot:

Recipe adapted from: https://iwashyoudry.com/instant-pot-spaghetti-and-meatballs/