California Casserole

California Casserole–penne pasta with tomatoes, spinach, corn, mushrooms, peppers, cheese and more! Make it fast in one pot, your Instant Pot.

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California Casserole

This veggied up penne pasta with ground beef and cheddar is so good! It’s a one pot meal that will feed your family and makes enough for leftovers for lunch the next day.

The idea for this recipe comes from Taste of Home. The author states, “This colorful casserole is named after the West Coast, but it always brings appreciative oohs and aahs when I serve it to fellow Texans. It’s compatible with a variety of side dishes.”

Feel free to get creative with substitutions. Try another type of pasta like macaroni, a different cheese like pepper jack and you can swap out veggies or add in more. We loved this dish and I hope you do too!

Ingredients/Substitution Ideas

• Lean ground beef–I used 93/7 lean. Or ground turkey/chicken.
• Onion–yellow or white
• Mushrooms–I used white button
• Celery salt
• Garlic powder–or granulated garlic
• Ground mustard
• Chili powder
• Black pepper
• Chicken broth–or beef broth or you can use water and Better than Bouillon
• Penne pasta–or another short cut pasta
• Red bell pepper–or green bell pepper
• Frozen sweet corn
• Tomato sauce
• Diced green chiles–I used mild
• Diced tomatoes–or fire roasted tomatoes
• Kosher salt
• Heavy cream
• Spinach–fresh or frozen
• Shredded cheddar cheese–or colby jack

Steps

Turn Instant Pot to saute setting. When display says HOT add in the ground beef and break it up. Add in the onions and mushrooms and brown for about 5 minutes. Stir in the celery salt, garlic powder, ground mustard, chili powder and pepper. 

Pour in the broth and scrape bottom of pot so that nothing is sticking. Turn off Instant Pot.

Evenly sprinkle in the penne.

Dump in the red bell pepper, corn, tomato sauce, green chiles and tomatoes and salt. Don’t stir.

Cover Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 3 minutes. When time is up let pot sit for 5-10 minutes and then move valve to venting. Remove the lid.

Stir in the heavy cream and spinach.

Finally add in the cheese and let it melt.

Serve and enjoy!

Notes/Tips

• This can be served as a stand alone meal but if you’d like some sides to go with it try garlic bread, green salad or fruit salad.
• I used my 6 quart Instant Pot*. You can also make this in a 8 quart pot. You have halve the recipe in a 3 quart pot.
• Store leftovers in an airtight container* in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
• Other recipes you can make with spinach are Tuscan Chicken Pasta and Spinach and Ravioli Lasagna.
• Try adding in more or different vegetables such as zucchini, kale, cauliflower, carrots, celery, etc.
• The original recipe calls for olives but my family doesn’t like olives much so I left them out. Feel free to stir in a small can of drained, sliced olives.
• If you use another type of pasta you may need to adjust the cooking time. Here is the formula: look at the back of the box of pasta and see how many minutes it says to boil the pasta. If it’s 10 minutes you divide that number by 2 (=5) and then subtract 2 minutes. So you would pressure cook for 3 minutes.

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More Instant Pot Penne Recipes…

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*Karen Petersen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.