Instant Pot French Onion Beef Casserole–an easy 6 ingredient recipe with beef, onions, pasta, sour cream and french fried onions that comes together quickly with the help of your Instant Pot.
Instant Pot French Onion Beef Casserole
If you’re looking for a flavorful and easy Instant Pot recipe for dinner tonight that uses a pound of ground beef I’ve got you covered. You’re likely to have all the ingredients on hand too. It’s a creamy pasta and beef casserole that’s topped with crispy french fried onions that your whole family will love. Let’s get started!
How to make Instant Pot french onion beef casserole:
- Measure out sour cream and set on the counter so that it can come to room temperature. This step is important so that the sour cream doesn’t curdle when you add it in later with the hot food. Alternately you could temper the sour cream by adding in a bit of hot broth with it before stirring it into the hot pasta.
- Brown the ground beef and onions together on the sauté setting (the MORE setting). I like to use lean or extra lean ground beef. My beef didn’t have much or any grease on it so I didn’t need to drain grease off. But if your beef has extra fat I would suggest draining it before the next step. Sometimes I use a paper towel to sop up some of the grease by moving the meat to one side of the pan and placing a paper towel on the other side of the pan and moving it around with a spoon.
- Stir in the onion soup mix. Coat the beef well with the soup mix. This will add a ton of flavor to the meat and is where the flavor from the casserole comes from. If you need to control the ingredients in the onion soup mix you can always make your own from scratch.
- Stir in the water and scrape bottom of pot so that nothing is sticking. By deglazing the pot you will avoid getting the burn error message.
- Add in the pasta and press down with a spoon to submerge. Don’t stir. Just gently press the pasta down. If you stir you’re likely to get the burn error message. You can use other types of pasta as well. Try using a short cut pasta like macaroni, cavatappi, penne or egg noodles. (If you use egg noodles only cook for 3 minutes, not 5 minutes).
- Pressure cook for 5 minutes and then use a 5-10 minute natural pressure release. Because the pot is already hot from using the sauté setting it will come to pressure quickly.
- Stir in the room temperature sour cream.
- At this point you can finish off the casserole in the oven or you can use your air fryer lid. For the oven, pour the mixture into a 9×9 inch baking dish, sprinkle the fried onions on top and bake at 350° F for 10 minutes. For the air fryer lid sprinkle the fried onions on top and cook for 5 minutes at 350° F with air fryer lid.
- Scoop up the casserole onto plates and serve. Some ideas to serve with Instant Pot french onion beef casserole are green tossed salad, raw veggies with dip, fruit salad or steamed broccoli.
More Ground Beef Recipes…
50+ Ways to Use Ground Beef in the Instant Pot or Slow Cooker
Instant Pot Preacher’s Casserole
Instant Pot Heavenly Casserole
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Instant Pot French Onion Beef Casserole
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 15 minutes
- Yield: 4–6 servings 1x
Description
An easy 6 ingredient recipe with beef, onions, pasta, sour cream and french fried onions that comes together quickly with the help of your Instant Pot.
Ingredients
- 1 pound lean ground beef
- 1 cup diced onion
- 1 (1 oz) packet Lipton’s onion soup mix
- 2 cups water
- 8 oz rotini noodles
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 cup French’s fried onions
Instructions
- Measure out sour cream and set on the counter so that it can come to room temperature.
- Turn Instant Pot to sauté setting. When display says HOT add in the ground beef and break it up. Add in the diced onion. Brown for about 5 minutes. Drain off any excess grease.
- Stir in the onion soup mix. Coat the beef well with the soup mix. Stir in the water and scrape bottom of pot so that nothing is sticking. Turn off Instant Pot.
- Add in the pasta and press down with a spoon to submerge.
- Cover Instant Pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 5 minutes. When time is up let pot sit for 5 minutes and then move the valve to venting. Remove the lid.
- Stir in the sour cream.
- Pour the mixture into a 9×9 inch baking dish or keep in the pot if you want to use your air fryer lid. Sprinkle the fried onions on top. Bake at 350° F for 10 minutes in the oven or for 5 minutes with air fryer lid.
- Category: Beef
- Method: Instant Pot/Oven/Air Fryer Lid
*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.
Hi! I’m not terribly fond of meats and am wondering if I could just leave out the ground beef? I like the idea above to stir in green beans after the pressure cook, especially if I could just leave the burger out ;-D
Thanks so much for all you do for everyone! ;-D
Sure I don’t see why not!
Hi Karen!
I made this tonight 🙂 I was wondering if I did something wrong though..? About half of my pasta came out undercooked? On one side it was cooked but the other side of the pasta was not. I followed the instructions but used a cup of beef broth and one cup of water. I did not bake in the oven, only in the instant pot.
★★★★
If not baking maybe try an extra half cup of liquid in the recipe! That should help.
Recipe turned out great, I did end up putting some more liquid and adding 5 more min of pressure cooking time. I probably measured the 8oz of pasta wrong. I did a google search and it said that 8oz was 3 cups of dry🤷♀️ But all the plates were empty 😉 thank you for all of your amazing recipes !!
★★★★
Can I substitute Knorrs French onion Soup mix for the Liptons? It was on sale and grabbed up a bunch. 🙂
Oh yes I’m sure that would be great!
This recipe looks great! Do you think I could substitute penne pasta for the rotini? Would I need to cook longer?
Yes you can do that. Add 1 extra minute.
Thank you!
Great idea for a recipe! Such good, savory flavors and a nice change of pace 🙂 I wanted to make this as described but had to make it with a few changes just due to items I had on hand. I substituted rice for the pasta, added a can of French cut green beans after it cooked in the instant pot but before putting in the oven and topped it with fresh grated Swiss cheese underneath the French onions the recipe called for. It was a HUGE hit with my family and had the plus of incorporating a hidden green vegetable! This is awesome because I was just too tired to make a salad or fight the “eat your veggie” battle with my three littles. Thank you so much, Karen !!! I will be making this again and again! My husband loved it. My son, who usually hates onions, said it reminds him of Krystal/White Castle burgers (which he had only gotten on very rare occasions after late sports games etc. and LOVES them), demolished it. It’s a winner!!!
I made this exactly as written. It’s very good, and recommended. It does make a loy of food, however. As I live alone, when I next make it I will halve the recipe. Those feeding only one or two might con sider the same, where practical.
Thanks! Good tip for those cooking for fewer people.
Thanks. I think I’ll try the Panko Bread crumbs.
I use onion powder as my adult son cannot bear the tast of onions he has to chew, but likes the onon flavor.
Lipton’s dry soup mix is OK with him.
What else would be good on the top beside French Fried Onions?
You might try crumbled potato chips or buttered panko bread crumbs. You could sprinkle some onion powder on the crumbs. I wonder how crumbled funyuns would be?
YES, crumbled Funyuns would be the bomb!
Love these ideas! Thanks Nancy!