Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs
Pressure Cooker / Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs is a quick and easy dump-and-go meal that uses frozen meatballs, spaghetti, and your favorite tomato sauce. It’s a simple and fast weeknight dinner recipe that’s fully kid-approved.
My kids love a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, topped with sauce and a generous sprinkle of parmesan cheese. (I’m honestly not sure where they get it from because I ate plain noodles until I was in my late teens… 😬)
This shortcut meal is one of my favorites to make in the electric pressure cooker because you cook the meatballs, spaghetti, and sauce all at the same time in the same pot.
And the best part? This recipe calls for frozen meatballs—no thawing necessary!
How to Make Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs
This Spaghetti and Meatball recipe will work in any brand of electric pressure cooker, including the Instant Pot, Ninja Foodi, or Power Pressure Cooker XL.
🛑 Dump-and-start spaghetti and meatballs is a popular first Instant Pot meal. However, there’s a couple of tricks you need to know to avoid the burn notice: layer the pasta and DO. NOT. STIR. the sauce.
How to Layer Pasta for Instant Pot Spaghetti
When you add the dry spaghetti to your pressure cooking pot, arrange the broken pasta in thin criss-crossed layers.
(It doesn’t have to be exact. Just make sure you don’t have big sections of spaghetti all facing the same direction.)
Spaghetti tends to clump together—even when cooking on the stovetop—and clumped-together spaghetti will cook like one big, thick noodle.
You can’t stir your spaghetti in the pressure cooking pot. Therefore, you have to fan it out thin before you add the sauce.
DO NOT STIR!
If you’re new to pressure cooking, it feels really weird not to stir your ingredients together. Especially spaghetti. But there’s a good reason!
In order to reach pressure, you need to cook with a small amount of clear, thin liquids.
🛑 Spaghetti sauce is too thick to use as a cooking liquid. It will stick to the bottom of the pot and you’ll get the burn notice.
To prevent this from happening, you can choose one of three pressure cooking methods:
- cook the sauce pot-in-pot,
- thin the sauce with pasta water and simmer off the extra, or
- use the pasta to keep the tomato sauce from touching the bottom of the cooking pot.
All of these options can work great for making pasta—it’s just about finding what works best for you!
Dump and Press Start Directions
As written, this recipe is almost dump and start. I like the deeper flavor from spending a minute to sauté garlic and red pepper flakes.
However, you can absolutely skip that first step!
Just add the olive oil with the dry pasta in step 3. (You can omit the oil, but it helps keep the noodles from sticking together.)
What Kind of Spaghetti Sauce Is Best?
We prefer to use a jarred spaghetti sauce that doesn’t contain any thickeners. We’ve tested it with both a fancy Dave’s Gourmet Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce, Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce, and a cheaper jar Prego Tomato Basil Garlic.
You can use any spaghetti sauce, but sauces with thickeners are more likely to settle on the bottom, risking the burn notice.
ℹ️ Commercial thickeners on the label will vary widely. Here are some common ones:
• alginates
• gums (xanthan gum or guar gum)
• starches (corn starch)
• pectin
• celluose.
You can also use your own homemade spaghetti sauce.
Can I Use Frozen or Fresh Meatballs in My Instant Pot?
You can make this easy Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs with frozen meatballs or fresh.
I almost never remember to thaw meat ahead of time. So I love that these go straight from frozen package to pot.
Can I Cook the Pasta and Spaghetti Sauce Separately?
Certainly! You can cook just the meatballs and the spaghetti in the pot and leave off the sauce.
If you want to warm the sauce at the same time everything else cooks, you’ll need to do it pot-in-pot. (See our how-to cook pasta guide for the full pot-in-pot instructions.)
You can also omit the meatballs and make just the spaghetti and sauce pot-in-pot.
More Easy Instant Pot Pasta Dinner Recipes
Whenever pasta is on the dinner menu, rely on your Instant Pot / Pressure Cooker to make your prep quick, easy, and fun. There are dozens of flavorful Instant Pot pasta recipes. Our favorites include:
- Instant Pot / Pressure Cooker American Chop Suey / Beefaroni is a classic comfort food of macaroni, ground beef, and a savory tomato sauce baked right in your pressure cooker.
- Pressure Cooker Chicken Bacon Penne Pasta has everyone’s favorite ingredients: tender chunks of chicken, al dente penne, and crispy, smoky bacon all in a creamy garlic sauce.
- Instant Pot Pasta Primavera from 365 Days of Crockpot & Pressure Cooking is a delicious vegetarian Instant Pot pasta recipe with fresh summery veggies and penne.
Instant Pot Spaghetti and Meatballs
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic finely chopped or pressed
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 pound frozen fully cooked Italian-style meatballs 1/2-ounce each
- 1 package 16 ounces spaghetti, broken in half
- 5 cups water
- 1 jar 24-ounce marinara sauce**
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving
Instructions
- Select Sauté on your pressure cooker. When the pot is hot, add the olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes to the pressure cooking pot. Sauté for 1 minute, until fragrant.**
- Add the meatballs in an even layer on the bottom of the cooking pot.
- Add the spaghetti on top, layering in thin criss-crossed layers.
- Add water (the water may not completely cover the noodles.)
- Gently pour the spaghetti sauce on top of the noodles in an even layer on top. DO NOT STIR.
- Lock the lid in place. Select High Pressure and 4 minutes cook time.
- When the cook time ends, turn off the pressure cooker. Use a quick pressure release. (If any liquid or foam starts to come out of the valve, switch it back to fully closed and wait a few seconds before venting the pressure again.) When the valve drops, carefully remove the lid.
- The pasta sauce will thicken as it cools, so I like to wait a few minutes before serving. Serve topped with fresh basil, parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper to taste.
Notes
Nutrition
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One jar Raos tomato basil. One lb Raos spaghetti. One bag SPROUTS grass fed beef meat balls. Never got a table at Raos cuz you need to know someone LOL but a girl can pretend. Have adapted to Rio Wide with no issues. Five cups of water is a lot!
Thanks for sharing Liane. Good to hear it works well in the Rio Wide. You can adjust the water to suit your tastes.
We have made this many times. This time, my husband cut up a package of Johnsonville Italian sausage into meatball-sized bites. Used that to line the bottom of the cooking pot. We skip the sauté step. Cheat with garlic powder. Followed remaining directions exactly. Turned out great. Prego sauce works perfectly in the recipe.
Thanks for sharing Lynn – Italian sausage sounds like a great addition.
Hi,
Can you increase the amount of meatballs in this recipe?
Hi Sharon – you can add a little bit more meatballs but if you add too many your spaghetti might now cook properly.
Would frozen chicken or turkey meatballs work with this recipe?
Hi Amanda – yes, they should work well with no changes.
Loved this recipe and it makes a ton. I added a package of frozen fajita vegetables, basically just onions and bell peppers. Cut the water to 3 and a half cups to compensate for the extra moisture they’d add. Came out great and didn’t need to adjust cooking time at all.
Thanks Jessica – sounds like a great addition!
I want to second the recommendation of Rao’s spaghetti sauce. I think the sauce I tried tasted very much like a homemade sauce. Rao’s makes a jillion varieties of sauces one could try. They’re a bit more expensive than some other sauces available at the supermarket but worth it I think.
Is it okay to use beef broth instead of water?
If I wanted to use onions, should I saute them at the beginning?
Hi Amanda – yes beef broth will work well and you’ll want to saute the onions at the beginning. Enjoy!
Thank you.
I like my pasta very saucy. Is it okay to use a second can of pasta sauce with the 16 oz package of spaghetti or would that mess up the cooking process?
Hi Barbara…like many people for whatever personal reasons, I have embraced the new Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger plant based products. Do you think the recipe as it is written would be suitable to replace the traditional meat balls with the Beyondmeat Italian style plant based frozen meat balls ? I would really like to try this recipe using this alternative product but I’m concerned the meatballs might lose their integrity and turn to mush under pressure. Or should I modify the time under pressure? Thanks very much
Hi Pat – I haven’t tried them, but my guess is they would work well as a substitute in this recipe with no changes. Let me know if you give it a try.
Thanks Barbara…hope to try the recipe this week & I will let you know how it turned out
How would you make a half recipe – how much liquid would be needed for 8 oz spaghetti? Thank you!
How can I make this in a 3 quart electric pressure cooker (Cooks Essential )?
Yes, you can make it in a 3 quart electric pressure cooker, you’ll just need to divide the recipe in half and use the same cooktime. Enjoy!
I’d like to add mushrooms. Would you sauté separately to remove water? Where in the layering would you suggest?
Hi Karen – I like my mushrooms sauteed in butter until they’re tender and then stirred in at the end, not pressure cooking them. But if you wanted to skip sauteing them and pressure cook them, I would add them on top of the spaghetti.
Thanks. I took your suggestion. Sautéed separately, stirred into cooked spaghetti. I added in the rest of the meatballs (cooked) from the package too.
next time going to sliver and sauté some zucchini and add that at the end, too. Sneak in that veggie!
Love this I.P. recipe . I make my own meatballs and freeze them. This is perfect, fast and makes a nice meal. My husband likes the “little” soupy sauce. 🙂 Great for leftovers too! I would like to know the brand or type of breadsticks you are serving. That makes a big difference too. Thanks again!
How would I make this if I have a frozen bag of meatballs in sauce (from Daniel Mancini QVC)
Would I place the frozen bag with the meatballs and sauce using the pot in pot method or would I need to remove them from the bag before pressure cooking? Would the cook time still be the same as the pasta?
Hi Arlene – I would cook it pot in pot as described in this post https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/how-to-cook-pasta-in-the-instant-pot/ Remove the meatballs and sauce from the bag and put it in the cake pan on the tall trivet on top of the pasta. If the sauce isn’t as hot as you’d like after pressure cooking the pasta, drain the pasta into a colander, put the sauce in the pressure cooking pot and use the saute function to finish heating the sauce, then stir the pasta into the sauce and serve.
Is 5 cups of water correct? I made it and it was very soupy, even after waiting for it thicken up.
Hi Mil – yes, it is correct. What type of spaghetti did you use? Some pastas absorb more water than others.
I am so excited to try this! I’ve been making a similar recipe with 8 ounces of spaghetti, but 12 ounces will be so much better. Thanks for posting!
Can you substitute penn or rotini pasta?
Hi Becky – yes, I use a 3 minute cook time with penne https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/how-to-cook-pasta-in-the-instant-pot/
We happened to have already planned spaghetti for tonight, so we tried this. It didn’t disappoint!
That’s so fun that you made it already. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing Laura!
Please list the size package of spaghetti this recipe is written for — 8 oz, 12 oz, 16 oz? Thank You
Thanks SO much for bringing this to my attention. This recipe is written for a 16 ounce package. I’ve updated the recipe!
I’m curious, what brand of meatballs do you use?
Our store just had one italian style meatballs in stock, but we ended up really liking them. We bought Cooked Perfect brand and we all really liked them, even my non-meatball-eating kid.
Barbara, When you say thickeners what does it say on the label exactly? Thanks
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I was wondering the same thing.
Mary and Julie, that’s a great question! It’s tricky because they use a lot of different things as thickeners. Simple to recognize ones are corn starch, yeasts, and different gums (Xanthan gum, oat gum). Then you get more chemical-sounding names like alginates, propylene glycol, polysorbates, diphosphates, celluose, mono- or diglycerides.
Hope this helps!