My whole family loves this Instant Pot Spaghetti! Silky, flavorful, a delightfully clingy. Easy enough for my kids to make it too!
Instant Pot Spaghetti
My Kindergartener Can Make This Recipe – And I Actually, Genuinely Love It
It’s a parenting first!
I love the idea of matching your kid’s age to a number of goal recipes – for example, when you’re 5 years old – you learn how to make 5 recipes. (I got this idea from Nita and Jess at Healthy Happy Eaters – they are wonderful.)
My daughter’s favorite dinner is spaghetti, so I thought making it in the Instant Pot might help it feel more manageable:
- it’s one single pot.
- no cutting board required.
- it has higher sides so there’s less splattering.
- no draining of boiling water.
We started making it this way “to help her” but quickly realized… Instant Pot spaghetti is actually kinda special. It’s silky, flavorful, and extra clingy. Makes for an ideal combo with house favorite garlic bread and air fryer broccoli.
These days, when my family requests spaghetti for dinner (made by me, or my daughter), THIS is the spaghetti they are asking for. Some people might be offended by the breaking of the noodles, which you have to do to get them to fit – but in our house we roll with it and the shorter noodles work great for kids.
The ratios are just how I like them: meaty, saucy, so comforting. A home run hit with my kids and my husband every time.
(But I’d make this for myself even if I didn’t have kids!)
Hope you love it! If you love easy dinner recipes – check out this mega page of all my favorites!
Watch How To Make This Recipe
Instant Pot Spaghetti
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Description
My whole family loves this Instant Pot Spaghetti! Silky, flavorful, a delightfully clingy. Easy enough for my kids to make it too!
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Instant Pot Spaghetti:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound ground beef (I use 85/15)
- 1/2 teaspoon each garlic powder, onion powder, and Italian seasoning
- 1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 (24 ounce) jar pasta sauce
- 1 3/4 cups water
- 1 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon (I use the chicken base)
- 8 ounces spaghetti, broken in half (1/2 pound)
Extras / Toppings:
- 4 tablespoons butter
- Parmesan cheese
- parsley or basil
- red pepper flakes
Instructions
- Meat: Turn the sauté function on in the Instant Pot. Add oil, ground meat, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning, garlic, and salt to the Instant Pot. It should sizzle. Sauté until the meat is browned and cooked through.
- Sauce: Add the jar of sauce, the water, Better than Bouillon, and the noodles. Make sure the noodles are tucked underneath the liquid.
- Cook: Cover, seal, and cook on high pressure for 8 minutes.
- Release Steam: Lay a towel over the vent to avoid splatters; release the steam right away to avoid overcooking the noodles.
- Rest: When you open the cover, the noodles will be cooked and it will look very saucy / wet. Use tongs to stir it up and distribute the sauce; let everything rest for 10 minutes. This is important because the noodles will absorb the sauce and everything will cling together just right!
- Done! Stir the butter in until melted and a little creamy. Top with Parmesan, serve with house favorite garlic bread to dunk in the sauce, and get a simple green salad on the side. Oooh so good.
Notes
Personally I love making this with Italian sausage! It has more flavor (you can even skip the salt because the sausage itself has a lot of salt in it). So, sausage is my pick – however, my family loves it with the classic ground beef so that’s what I am including in the recipe. 🙂
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Instant Pot
- Cuisine: Italian
Keywords: instant pot spaghetti, easy spaghetti recipe, kid-friendly recipe, instant pot pasta recipe
More Favorite Kid-Friendly Recipes
Filed Under: All Recipes Dinner Instant Pot Kid-Friendly Meat and Chicken Pasta Quick and Easy Recipes Tomato
July 31, 2025
Nice to meet you!
I’m Lindsay and I ♡ FOOD. I used to be a teacher, and now making food and writing about it online is my full-time job. I love talking with people about food, and I'm so glad you're here.
Did you make a recipe? Tag @pinchofyum on Instagram so we can find you!
Have you made this with a pasta like Banza?
We haven’t tested it with a gluten-free pasta yet, let us know if you do!
I’m going to try with with Gluten Free Rummo brand pasta! Banza always falls apart for me – but this brand holds up really well always!
Hi! If I am making this without meat, would you suggest adjusting the cooking time at all? Thanks!
Is it possible to make this in a crockpot?
Also highly recommend making it with frozen meatballs. SO good.
This looks like a perfect weeknight meal for a busy family. Love that your daughter helps too! Quick question: if we are trying to eat more vegetarian meals, could we omit the beef but keep the spices etc? Do you think it would all pull together still? Thanks so much!
Hmmm… we wouldn’t know that without testing it. If you wanted to substitute something like Impossible Burger, I think that would be your best for it to turn out right.
Does it work to double this recipe?
We haven’t tested that, but it seems like that amount of ingredients might be too much for the Instant Pot to handle. If you do decide to try it, make sure you don’t go past the max fill line inside the pot.
My kiddo is entering K this year in STP and this recipe caught my eye. We had it for dinner tonight and subbed 1/2 the water with bone broth and added some onion from the farmers market. So yummy! The butter makes it.
Yes, that last addition butter gives it the extra yumminess!
This feels silly to ask but when does the bouillon go in? When sautéing with the meat/spices or with the sauce/water/pasta?
Thanks!
Not silly, it was missing! Now updated, thanks for catching – goes in with the water.
Love the ease of this but what if you don’t have an Instant Pot? (Want to get one but the kitchen (and husband) cannot take one. More. Appliance!) Is there any other “instant” way to make this?
I’m going to try this with the one-pot-pasta method and see what we get! https://www.budgetbytes.com/italian-wonderpot/
I dearly miss my instant pot and will be repurchasing one soon (we just moved countries and it wouldn’t have worked here), but most things can be made with a little more time on the stovetop! We just made Lindsey’s chicken and dumplings recipe with the stovetop instructions on the bottom of the recipe card and it was perfection.
This seems like a great mini series: foods your five year old can make! SOS was great for the toddler years, but man I’d for sure tune in for the newly-independent skills! We’re for sure trialing this with our kids!
This was delicious, and SO easy! I always have frozen Italian sausage because it defrosts so easily in water when I’ve forgotten to take anything out for dinner (read: we eat a LOT of Italian sausage 😆). I freeze my marinara in 3 c containers. Supper was DONE – and so good!
Yay, so glad it was enjoyed!