Name: Instant Pot Creamy Pasta and Meatballs
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 3 chicken thighs ((skinless and boneless)); 2 tablespoons Panko breadcrumbs ((or regular breadcrumbs)); 1 teaspoon Mrs Dash original; 1/4 teaspoon salt ((or more to taste)); 1 tablespoon Canola oil; 1/2 onion ((finely chopped)); 2 cloves garlic ((minced)); 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves ((about 2-3 sprigs)); 1 cup canned diced tomatoes; 1 cup cream cheese ((125 g or half a package)); 250 g fettuccine; 1 cup chicken broth; 3/4 cup milk; 1 cup shredded mozzarella; salt and pepper to taste; parmesan and fresh thyme for serving ((optional))

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This Instant Pot Creamy Pasta and Meatballs is pure comfort food with almost no effort! Easy to make and really delicious, perfect one-pot meal even for busy evenings!

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I love pasta in any shape or form and will rarely say no to it. However, if I had to choose Red or White sauce, then I will always choose White! Are you team Red or White??

With all my love for creamy white pasta sauce, it rarely happens in my kitchen. My husband strongly prefers tomato-based pasta sauce.

So, in this recipe for Instant Pot Creamy Pasta and Meatballs, I added a little bit of tomatoes into a creamy sauce to satisfy my husband’s tomato requirements. The result is a luscious creamy pasta with juicy chicken meatballs. It’s all made together in Instant Pot, so it’s an easy weeknight meal.

Why make Creamy Pasta and Meatballs in Instant Pot?

There seem to be two different opinions in terms of Instant Pot Pasta. Some say that it tastes weird and some love it. I actually do not taste a difference between pasta cooked in Instant Pot or pasta cooked on the stove.

What I love about making Instant Pot Pasta is that everything is made in one pot and I do not have to wait for the water to boil, do any kind of stirring, or draining. There’s also less cleanup and less hand-on cooking time.

I don’t have to watch the sauce while it cooks. I don’t have to make sure that pasta doesn’t overboil. It is just so much more convenient and easy to put everything into one pot and let it be.

Ingredients for Creamy Pasta and Meatballs

You don’t need anything too fancy and most ingredients are already in your pantry or fridge.

For the chicken meatballs

Chicken thighs
Breadcrumbs
Seasonings. I use Mrs. Dash and salt

For the creamy sauce

Onion
Garlic
Canned diced tomatoes
Fresh thyme
Cream cheese
Chicken broth. I use Better Than Bouillon
Milk

Other ingredients

Fettuccine
Oil
Mozzarella cheese
Parmesan for serving (optional)

How to make chicken meatballs

Making chicken meatballs for the Creamy Pasta and Meatballs recipe is actually super easy.

Combine the chicken thighs, seasonings, and breadcrumbs in a small food processor. I use an older version of this set. I’ve had it for over 10 years and it still works great.
Blitz until the mixture is well mixed. It doesn’t have to be super smooth.
Shape into meatballs.

How to make Instant Pot Creamy Pasta and Meatballs

Whenever I cook in my Instant Pot, I love using as few steps as possible, so very often I don’t sauté or brown to save a step. But in this particular recipe, it is really nice to actually brown the meatballs.

So, first you start by browning the meatballs on sauté mode in a little bit of oil. Turn them a couple of times.

Then add a splash of chicken broth and scrape, scrape, scrape to deglaze the pot. If you skip this step, then Instant Pot may give you a burn notice. My model doesn’t display burn but one time when I forgot to deglaze for this recipe, it didn’t come to pressure. Everything still cooked great but pressure wasn’t achieved fully.

Once deglazed, add the onion, garlic, thyme, tomatoes, and cream cheese on top of the meatballs. Add the pasta, pour the broth and milk over and cook on high pressure for 5 minutes.

Do a 2 minutes natural pressure release and then finish with a quick release. Mix everything together, add the cheese and cook on sauté for another 5-7 minutes to thicken.

Can you actually cook with milk in Instant Pot?

I get this question a lot! People either plainly state that my recipes will never work because I cook with milk (spoiler alert: every recipe is tested on average 3 times, often more before I publish it, so they actually work!!) or other people ask how could it work if I cook with milk.

I am not sure where this reluctance of cooking with milk in an electric pressure cooker originated but here are some of my thoughts and findings:

If milk is the only liquid then it could (not necessarily as it all depends on your model of Instant Pot) burn. In most my recipes where I use milk, I also use broth, so milk is diluted enough that it does not burn.

If Pot in Pot method of cooking is used, then milk sometimes bubbles out of the container. This is not an issue in this particular recipe but it could easily be mitigated by using a taller insert.

And finally, when milk is heated up, it often splits into whey and milk solids, so it looks like it curdled. Curdled milk sounds bad to most people but it actually is the first step in making cheese. So, all those milk solids are essentially one step below ricotta. And in my book, ricotta is perfect in sauces. You can see in the video how the sauce looks right after the lid is opened and after a bit of mixing it gets luscious and smooth.

How long does it take to make Instant Pot Creamy Pasta and Meatballs

There’s a little bit of prep time as you need to actually measure all the ingredients and make the chicken meatballs but the rest of the meal comes together with almost no hand-on cooking.

Let’s say it takes 15 minutes to measure and prep/chop all the ingredients and then roll the meatballs. Add 7 minutes to sauté the meatballs and deglaze the pan. Another 9 minutes for electric pressure cooker to come to pressure. Cooking is only 5 minutes, then 2 minutes of natural pressure release and about 2 more minutes for quick release. Finally, add another 7 minutes on sauté to slightly thicken the sauce. Total time from the moment you start measuring the ingredients to the time the meal is ready to eat is: 47 minutes.

Tips for making Instant Pot Creamy Pasta and Meatballs

Meatballs

You can shape them into smaller meatballs if you’d like
You can use your favourite meatball recipe and your favourite seasonings
If you don’t feel like making meatballs, you can dice the chicken thighs into pieces and just sauté the chicken on its own first. Follow the rest of the recipe after

Pasta

You can use fettuccine or spaghetti
Most likely you can use other shapes of pasta also
Most important thing is that you need to make sure that the pasta you use is cooked in 10-12 minutes on the stove. If you use pasta that is cooked in 6-8 minutes on the stove then the cooking of 5 minutes in Instant Pot will be too much and will make mushy pasta

Sauce

Once Instant Pot is opened, it’ll look like the sauce is too thin, just mix it up and cook on sauté for 5-7 minutes. It’ll thicken slightly and it will continue thickening as it cools

Leftovers

Since the sauce thickens as it cools, leftover pasta is not easy to heat up. I do not have a microwave, so the only way to heat it up for me is to add a bit of milk or cream to a wide pan and add pasta to it. You need extra liquid to make it saucy again.

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