Instant Pot Italian-Style Winter Soup—Italian sausage with rice and spinach in a delicious broth.
Instant Pot Italian-Style Winter Soup
This is a great way to start off the fall season! This soup has a delicious broth with bites of Italian sausage, rice and a pop of green color from the spinach. The soup is finished off with parmesan cheese and a little cream. Mmm mmm! I know you’ll love it.
Ingredients you’ll need for the soup…
- Olive oil
- Ground or Links of Italian sausage
- Diced yellow onion
- Garlic cloves–you can also use jarred minced garlic
- Dried thyme
- Chicken broth–or 6 cups water and 6 tsp Better than Bouillon chicken base
- Converted rice–or long grain white rice
- Shredded parmesan cheese
- Spinach–you can use fresh or frozen
- Half and half–or heavy cream
Steps
- Brown the sausage: Turn your Instant Pot to the sauté setting and adjust to “more.” Add in the oil. Let the pot heat up for a couple of minutes. Add in the sausage and brown for about 5 minutes. Add in the onion and sauté for 3 minutes. Add in the garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add in the thyme.
- Deglaze: Pour in the broth and scrape bottom of pot so nothing is sticking. Add in the rice.
- Pressure cook: Cover the pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the SOUP button to 1 minute. (If you don’t have a soup button you can just use the pressure cook button)
- Prep: While the pot is coming to pressure chop your spinach and warm up your dairy (I just stuck mine in the microwave for 30 seconds).
- Natural release: When time is up let the pot sit for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, move the valve to venting. Once you can, remove the lid.
- Finish it up: Stir in the parmesan cheese, spinach and half and half. Salt and pepper the soup to taste.
- Serve: Ladle soup into bowls and top with additional parmesan cheese.
Notes/Tips
- Serve with fresh French bread, breadsticks or cornbread with honey butter.
- I used my 6 quart Instant Pot*. You can also make this in a 8 quart pot. Halve the recipe in the 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 Italian sausage are Instant Pot Italian Sausage And Spinach Soup and Instant Pot Italian Sausage Tortellini.
- Recipe adapted from All Recipes.
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Did you know you can filter the recipes on my website to search by meat type, IP or Crockpot, low carb, gluten free, etc.? Use the filter to find exactly what you are looking for.
Instant Pot Italian-Style Winter Soup
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 minute (plus 10 minute NPR)
- Total Time: 21 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
Description
Italian sausage with rice and spinach in a delicious broth.
Ingredients
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 1 pound ground or links of Italian sausage (if you use links slice them into half inch rounds)
- 1 cup diced yellow onion
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/4 tsp dried thyme
- 6 cups chicken broth (or 6 cups water and 6 tsp Better than Bouillon chicken base)
- 3/4 cup uncooked converted or long grain white rice
- 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
- 5 ounces coarsely chopped spinach
- 1/2 cup half and half or heavy cream, warmed
Instructions
- Turn your Instant Pot to the sauté setting and adjust to “more.” Add in the oil. Let the pot heat up for a couple of minutes. Add in the sausage and brown for about 5 minutes. Add in the onion and sauté for 3 minutes. Add in the garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add in the thyme.
- Pour in the broth and scrape bottom of pot so nothing is sticking. Add in the rice.
- Cover the pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the SOUP button to 1 minute.
- While the pot is coming to pressure chop your spinach and warm up your dairy (I just stuck mine in the microwave for 30 seconds).
- When time is up let the pot sit for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, move the valve to venting. Once you can, remove the lid.
- Stir in the parmesan cheese, spinach and half and half. Salt and pepper the soup to taste.
- Ladle soup into bowls and top with additional parmesan cheese.
- Category: Soup
- Method: Instant Pot or Slow Cooker
*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.
Can brown rice be used with an increase in cooking time or would it be best to cook the brown rice on the stovetop and add it in before serving?
Sure you could do that. I would pressure cook for 20 minutes on the soup button with a 10 minute natural pressure release.
Yum; so good. To up the veggies, I added 2 diced carrots and some celery with the leaves. Also added a parmesan rind to bump up the parmesan flavor.
★★★★★
Love the idea of parmesan rind!
Doesn’t rice take at least 5 min ot more. seems to me 1 min will not cook rice enough.
was this a error in recipe?
I would guess that the rice finishes cooking during the 10 minutes of natural release after the cooking time is complete?
no error…it really is a 1 minute pressure cook time. The pot takes a while to heat up with all that liquid in it so the rice is cooking the whole time. Plus there is a bit of a natural release too.