One-Pot Instant Pot Tortellini
One-Pot Tortellini in the Instant Pot is an easy, family-friendly vegetarian recipe that’s made with your favorite stuffed pasta in a cheesy tomato sauce with baby spinach.

❤️ Why you’ll love it: Instant Pot Tortellini with tomato-spinach sauce is a satisfying one-pot recipe that goes from frozen to finished in 15 minutes.
Tortellini is always a crowd-pleaser at my house. Whether it’s filled with meat or cheese, everyone is always happy to dig into piping hot bowls of tortellini. And while it’s easy to cook up frozen or fresh tortellini on the stovetop, you always have to make a separate sauce.
That’s why I decided to combine the sauce and pasta into a one-pot tortellini recipe for the Instant Pot.
You get all of the rich, well-developed flavors of a long-simmered tomato sauce. However, this recipe has a 2 minute cook time, and there’s no need to boil water for the tortellini!
How to Make Instant Pot Tortellini
This One-Pot Tortellini recipe will work in any brand of electric pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot, Ninja Foodi, or Power Pressure Cooker XL.
The great thing about this recipe is that there are no special tricks or strategies to pull it off. This is a fantastic recipe for beginners––it’s as simple as dump and go.
Simply combine all of the ingredients in the pressure cooking pot, lock the lid in place, and after a 2-minute cook time at high pressure, you can release the pressure and reveal your bubbling hot, deeply flavorful dinner!
While you can enjoy the pasta as-is when you remove the lid, I like a slightly thicker sauce coating my pasta. If you do too, then stir in a quick slurry of cornstarch and water to thicken up the dish a bit. It takes just a few minutes, and you can do this while the spinach cooks down into the sauce.
Can I Add Meat?
This recipe is based on the creamy sausage tortellini recipe in our Electric Pressure Cooker Cookbook.
If you want to add a little more protein to this meal, add sausage for a richer, smokier flavor. To do so, brown the sausage in the pressure cooking pot on the Sauté function before you add the remaining ingredients. Then follow the recipe as written.
You could also swap cheese tortellini for your favorite meat-filled pasta with no changes to the recipe.
Suggestions for Leftovers
If you end up with leftovers, you can store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. I don’t recommend freezing the cooked tortellini, as the texture may not hold up well after defrosting.
When I made this at home, we ended up eating all the tortellini but had leftover sauce. My oldest specifically asked me to save the extra sauce to eat on pasta the next day for lunch! It’s that good!
More Quick and Easy Instant Pot Pasta Recipes
Instant Pot Pasta is SOOO easy! Try these other kid-approved recipes next:
- Instant Pot Bow Tie Pasta is the perfect easy weeknight meal with noodles in a simple and savory tomato sauce.
- Pepperoni Pizza Pasta is perfect if you have an air fryer lid to make gooey, melty cheese on top.
- Instant Pot White Cheddar Macaroni from 365 Days of Pressure Cooking is another meatless and delicious meal with creamy, melted cheese coating elbow pasta.
- Instant Pot Shrimp Pasta from Paint the Kitchen Red is an easy one-pot meal that cooks up quick!
Do you LOVE this recipe?
Leave us a review below to tell us why!
One-Pot Tortellini
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 cup reduced-sodium vegetable broth
- 2 cans 14.5 ounces, each fire-roasted diced tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 package 19 ounces frozen cheese tortellini*
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons cold water
- 2 cups fresh baby spinach
- Grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Add the broth, tomatoes, basil, onion powder, salt, and tortellini to the pressure cooking pot.
- Lock the lid in place. Select High Pressure and 2 minutes cook time. When the cook time ends, turn off the pressure cooker. Use a quick pressure release. When the valve drops, carefully remove the lid.
- In a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch and cold water until smooth. Select Sauté and add the slurry to the pot, stirring constantly. Add the spinach and stir until it wilts. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve with parmesan.
Notes
Nutrition
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Would this work with non frozen tortellini?
Hi Janette – others have commented that they used fresh without changing the cook time. Enjoy!
Will gluten free frozen tortellini work in this recipe? (Taste Republic brand). If so, would the cook time be the same? Thanks!
I haven’t tried it, but I assume it would work with no change in cook time. Let me know if you try it.
Would it be ok to double the recipe?
Hi Beth – you can double the recipe as long as you don’t fill your pot more than 2/3’s full. You may want to reduce the cook time to 1 minute because it will take longer to come to pressure.
Wow, great! I chopped the spinach so it was smaller because my picky hubby doesn’t like spinach so I could minimize it. Our store only had fresh tortellini. I followed the directions exactly and felt I would have liked more sauce. My husband loved it, so it was a hit because he’s hard to cook for. I thought it was super easy and delicious. Thank you for another great recipe.
Glad it was a hit – thanks Barbara!
Yum. Wouldn’t change a thing. Thought about substituting jarred marinara sauce, but decided too try it first as written. Glad I did. Will definitely make again. Less processed foods the better.
That’s great to hear – thanks Becky!
If I halved the recipe, including the broth, would it work in a 3 qt instant pot? Would
beef broth or chicken broth be OK instead of veg broth?
Hi Joan – I haven’t tried it, but it should work well to halve the recipe and use the same cook time in the 3 quart. Beef or chicken broth would work great too.
Could you use jarred marinara instead of the canned tomatoes or would that be too thick?
Hi K – I haven’t tried it, but you could sub jarred marinara instead of canned tomatoes, but don’t mix it in, layer it on top of all the ingredients, and don’t stir. You probably won’t need to do a cornstarch slurry at the end. Let me know how it goes. If you’re making it in an 8 quart pressure cooker, you’ll want to add more chicken broth.