One dinner that will satisfy everyone in your house is Instant Pot Spaghetti with your favorite Jar Sauce! Pop it all in your Electric Pressure Cooker, no boiling, draining, or multiple pots. Just a 2 minute cook time with a 5 minute natural release and your spaghetti dinner is ready!
Some other great pasta dinner recipes are Instant Pot Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, and Tomato Cream Sauce.
Ingredients
Here are the things you need to make this Instant Pot Spaghetti recipe:
Chicken Broth – I use chicken broth because it adds another layer of flavor to your spaghetti. However, you can absolutely use water instead.
Store Bought Marinara – I happen to have Prego sauce in my pantry the day that I made this, but use whatever sauce your family loves!
You can even use homemade marinara sauce if you like.
How to Make Spaghetti in Your Instant Pot
Start with your Instant Pot on sauté mode and add the olive oil. Once it is hot add the onions and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes. Stir often making sure they don’t burn.
Turn off the sauté mode and stir in the kosher salt. Then pour in the chicken broth (or water) and scrape up and browned bits from the bottom.
Pro Tip: never skip scraping up the browned bits (called deglazing) when using the Instant Pot. It helps prevent the burn notice.
Grab the spaghetti and break in half. Place the spaghetti in the pot in a crisscross pattern. This prevents the pasta from cooking in one large clump.
Do not stir the pasta at this point, just give it a light press to make sure that it is all touching the liquid.
Pour half the jar of sauce over the pasta, then sprinkle on the seasonings.
Close the lid and turn the pressure valve to seal. Set to cook for 2 minutes.
At the end do a 5 minute natural release. Finish with a quick release.
PRO TIP: It will look a little watery when you open the pot, don’t worry, the starches from the cooked pasta will thicken it up while it cools!
Stir in the rest of the jar of sauce and toss the pasta. Let the pasta rest for about 5 minutes so it can thicken a little while it cools.
Taste for additional seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic powder), then serve warm topped with parmesan cheese.
Tips to Make it Perfect!
Follow these few tips to make sure your Instant Pot Spaghetti turns out perfect:
- Salt your water/broth! By salting the liquid you in turn are seasoning your pasta.
- Break the spaghetti noodles in half and then crisscross them in the pot. This will prevent your noodles from cooking into one big clump.
- Make sure the noodles are all touching the liquid.
- Put the broth/water on the bottom and the sauce on top to avoid the burn notice.
- Use regular spaghetti noodles… not fettuccine, angel hair, gluten free etc… this recipe is written for straight up spaghetti noodles. You can use the other pastas, it will just change the cook time and possibly liquid quantities.
Recipe FAQ’s
The cooking liquid you use needs to be able to build a good amount of steam, like water or broth, in turn building pressure. Therefore a thick tomato sauce or thickened cream sauce are not considered good cooking liquids for the Instant Pot, unless diluted with water or broth.
Absolutely! It is recommended that you use dry pasta, not fresh, in the Instant Pot. You can find the cooking time on the package by finding the average stovetop boil time, divide that time in half and then substract 2 minutes. Make sure you add a 5 minute natural release at the end.
If you do not have ample thin liquid added to your thick tomato sauce it will burn. It is essentially cooking to the bottom of the Instant Pot, where the heating element is. If you have enough broth or water added to the tomato sauce then it will boil/steam, which is what you want.
Related Recipes
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Instant Pot Spaghetti with Jar Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ onion minced/diced
- 2 garlic cloves
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 3 cups chicken broth (or water)
- 1 lb. dry spaghetti noodles
- 24 oz favorite jarred marinara sauce divided
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon dried basil
- ¼ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon onion powder
Instructions
- Start with your Instant Pot on sauté mode and add the olive oil. Once it is hot add the onions and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes. Stir often, making sure they don't burn.
- Turn off the sauté mode and stir in the kosher salt. Then pour in the chicken broth (or water) and scrape up and browned bits from the bottom.
- Break your spaghetti noodles in half and layer them in a crisscross pattern in the liquid. Pro Tip: Do not stir the noodles at this point. You can nudge them down into the liquid, but don't stir.
- Pour HALF OF THE 24 oz jar of marinara over the noodles. Sprinkle the basil, oregano, garlic powder and onion powder over the top.
- Pop the lid on, turn the pressure valve to seal, and set to cook for 2 minutes on high pressure. Do a 5 minute natural release and the finish with a quick release.
- Open the pot and pour in the other half of the spaghetti sauce. Do not be alarmed if your pasta looks watery when you open the pot it will thicken as it cools. Give it all a good toss. Let it sit for about 5 minutes to cool and thicken.
- Taste for additional seasonings (salt and pepper).
- Serve warm topped with grated parmesan cheese!
Notes:
- Break the spaghetti noodles in half and then crisscross them in the pot. This will prevent your noodles from cooking into one big clump.
- Make sure the noodles are all touching the liquid.
- Put the broth/water on the bottom and the sauce on top to avoid the burn notice.
- Use regular spaghetti noodles… not fettuccine, angel hair, gluten free etc… this recipe is written for straight up spaghetti noodles. You can use the other pastas, it will just change the cook time and possibly liquid quantities.
If nutrition facts are provided they are calculated as an estimate to the best of our knowledge.
S Clark
Made it today to go with chicken parmesan. I used 3 cups water and a generous tablespoon of better than bullion Italian herb. A couple of toothless folk in my family like their noodles really soft so I did 3 minutes and left out on warm after adding the rest of the sauce. Perfect!
Soph
The pasta was uncooked and completely stuck together. Stirring is crucial, it ruined my meal
Dawn
Do you think there are any adjustments needed if I add frozen meatballs?
Susie Weinrich
Hi Dawn, I am not sure. I haven’t tried adding frozen meatballs. Give it a try by adding them to the top of the spaghetti. With the 2 minute cook time, 5 minute natural release and then the 5 minute cooling/thickening time I bet they will be warmed through.
Let me know how it goes!!
michael
Great spaghetti, reminds me of the spaghetti by Franco American only this is better. The only thing I did different is I added green pepper an mushrooms. I love mushrooms.
Tina
This turned out perfectly. What a great, low-energy way to make pasta – no water boil, much less water, no natural gas, one pot.
Delicious!
Susan Bowers
So so SO good. Used angel hair pasta; all I had. Cooked 2 min. Just perfect. Used Rai’s arribiata sauce. Extra spicy.
Liane G
So easy but we don’t eat wheat. I went against your advice and used brown rice spaghetti. It’s a brand I hadn’t tried before and it said cook 11 minutes. But regular spaghetti is dead after 11 minutes if I recall correctly so I increased the cooking time to 4. After 4 I wasn’t too sure about how tender it would be so I did open the pot to check. It was almost perfect, next time I’ll do 5. After the minutes, I put the top back on and let it sit a bit. It was quite thick! It’s definitely a great recipe.
Susie Weinrich
SO glad to know that the brown rice pasta works! Thank you for testing this and reporting back!
Carolyn Mosley
Like an uninformed person, I was not putting the water in the instant pot with my dry spaghetti and my canned store-bought spaghetti sauce. Couldn’t figure out why I always got the burn notice. I thought if I put the 1 cup usual liquid in it it would make the spaghetti sauce watery so therefore I kept skipping it. Always had a mess. Thank you so much for this recipe; it was exactly what I needed and told me why I needed that cup of water also. Thank you very much
Parissa
Just made this dish and it came out delicious. Did double the amount of garlic as we love garlic. Overall recipe was easy to follow and didn’t get a burn notice.
BusyMom
Put 3 1/4 cups water just to be sure it wouldn’t burn and followed the rest of the directions exactly. The instant pot still came up saying burn and I had to salvage what I could.
Carol
I have made this and the sauce is to thin can I cut the water down to 1 1/2 cups
Susie Weinrich
I would go down to 1 3/4 cups or 2 cups, just to make sure you have enough liquid and you don’t get the “burn” warning.
Stephanie
I was skeptical but this is really good. Just enough “doctoring up” to make it taste homemade
Sam
I cris crossed the noodles but they still came out in a clump. Is there anything i can do to fix it?
Lexi Evans
I added a little oil on top of the noddles and they didn’t stick.