Instant Pot Meatballs–you can make meatballs in your electric pressure cooker! They’re tender and taste great served over pasta and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. This is a hands off recipe that takes just a few minutes to cook. Try making these with ground turkey, beef, pork, chicken or a combination.
Get the SLOW COOKER version of the recipe here
Instant Pot Meatballs
I love making instant pot meatballs for my family. We all love them and everybody is happy. The only problem is when I don’t make enough. Sometimes I go the easy route and use frozen meatballs but I am always just a bit disappointed in the taste. Making homemade meatballs is super easy and it’s super fast when you use your electric pressure cooker.
Meat: For this recipe I ended up using 1 pound of ground turkey and 1/2 pound of ground pork. You can use a combination of pork, beef, turkey and chicken. I would only suggest that you use somewhat of a leaner meat so that the film of grease on top of the sauce isn’t too thick.
Breadcrumbs: I used store-bought garlic herb breadcrumbs. You can use plain breadcrumbs, panko breadcrumbs or Italian seasoned breadcrumbs. It’s up to you. You can also make your own breadcrumbs with your food processor.
Dried Onion: I used dehydrated onion because it’s so fast and easy to grab but if you want to dice a fresh onion that would be great too. Use about 1/2 cup of fresh onion.
Spaghetti Sauce: Because we are using the pressure cooker we have to have enough liquid to bring it to pressure. That is why I add in a cup of water with my spaghetti sauce. It gets a bit watered down but nothing too crazy. I just used a can of spaghetti sauce that was in my pantry but feel free to use you favorite fancy jarred pasta sauce.
More Instant Pot recipes…
Instant Pot Chicken Bacon Avocado Salad
Instant Pot Crispy Pork Carnitas
Instant Pot White Bean Garlic Hummus
Get ALL my Instant Pot recipes here
What Pressure Cooker Did You Use?
To make Instant Pot Meatballs I used my 6 quart Instant Pot Duo 60 7 in 1 for this recipe. I also own the 6 quart Instant Pot IP-LUX60 V3 Programmable Electric Pressure Cooker. They are both great pressure cookers! The first one I mentioned has a yogurt making function but other than that they are fairly similar. The price difference between the two is about $20.
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Instant Pot Meatballs
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 minutes (plus 10 minute NPR)
- Total Time: 15 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Description
You can make meatballs in your electric pressure cooker! They’re tender and taste great served over pasta and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. This is a hands off recipe that takes just a few minutes to cook. Try making these with ground turkey, beef, pork, chicken or a combination.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs ground turkey, beef, pork or chicken (or you can use a combination of two of the meats)
- 1 1/2 Tbsp dried onion
- 3/4 cup breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 Tbsp dried parsley
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1 1/2 tsp Worchesteshire sauce
- 1 cup water
- 1 (24 oz) jar of spaghetti sauce
- Pasta of your choice
- Parsley and Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Instructions
- In a bowl, combine the meat, onion, breadcrumbs, egg, parsley, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Use your clean hands (or gloved hands) to really combine the ingredients.
- Pour the water and the spaghetti sauce into the bottom of the Instant Pot. Stir.
- Form the meat into meatballs and place them into the sauce in the Instant Pot.
- Cover the Instant Pot and make sure valve is on “sealing.” Set the timer on manual (high pressure) to 5 minutes. While the pot is heating up you can boil pasta on the stove top. When the timer beeps let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes. Move the valve to “venting” to release any remaining pressure. Open the lid.
- Serve meatballs and sauce over pasta and garnish with parmesan cheese and parsley.
Notes
I used my 6 quart Instant Pot Duo 60 7 in 1 for this recipe.
Meat: For this recipe I ended up using 1 pound of ground turkey and 1/2 pound of ground pork. You can use a combination of pork, beef, turkey and chicken. I would only suggest that you use somewhat of a leaner meat so that the film of grease on top of the sauce isn’t too thick.
Breadcrumbs: I used store-bought garlic herb breadcrumbs. You can use plain breadcrumbs, panko breadcrumbs or Italian seasoned breadcrumbs. It’s up to you. You can also make your own breadcrumbs with your food processor.
Dried Onion: I used dehydrated onion because it’s so fast and easy to grab but if you want to dice a fresh onion that would be great too. Use about 1/2 cup of fresh onion.
Spaghetti Sauce: Because we are using the pressure cooker we have to have enough liquid to bring it to pressure. That is why I add in a cup of water with my spaghetti sauce. It gets a bit watered down but nothing too crazy. I just used a can of spaghetti sauce that was in my pantry but feel free to use you favorite fancy jarred pasta sauce.
To make gluten free: They sell gluten-free bread crumbs at most local grocery stores. Substitute regular pasta with gluten-free pasta.
- Method: Instant Pot
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I cook about 2 lbs of meatballs and enough pasta to cover the meatballs I put 24 oz is can sauce and 1 cup of beef sauce, deforestation 5 minutes in pressure cooker, manually release but the pasta wasn’t soft enough so I cooked it again for 2 more minutes but it got burn in the bottom of the pot, you think if I put olive oil on the bottom before I put everything it will help not to burn. Thank you.
Lily
Shoot! I think that may help. Add in the beef broth first instead of the sauce too.
I don’t think you were supposed to cook the pasta in the pressure cooker. That’s not what the recipe says…
i love the all the flavor from the spices it gives it an amazing taste!
Thanks Olivia! Glad you liked it!
could i try adding noodles on the bottom?
Yes I think you could. For every 8 oz of pasta add in 1 3/4 cups of broth or water.
My family loves meat balls with canned or jarred chicken gravy. Could the chicken gravy be used in place of the pasta sauce?
Hi Rita, that sounds great! I bet it would work just fine.
I was afraid of getting the burn notice after reading all the reviews, so I tried something different from the way the recipe is written. Had 4 mushrooms to use up, so sliced them and put those on the bottom. Then I added the meatballs next (made about 30 using a scoop). Next I added a can of diced Italian tomatoes, and finally the spaghetti sauce (did not add any water and did not stir). Set the timer for 5 minutes, but after about 10 minutes of pressurizing, realized it was on low pressure from a previous recipe I made. I changed it over to high pressure as soon as I realized the error, and had no problems with getting the burn message. So, I’m not sure if the reason I didn’t get the burn message was a combination of using the mushrooms like a trivet, and not putting the sauce directly in the bottom of the pan, or if it was because of using the low pressure for quite a while, but the bottom line of this story is it turned out GREAT.
I love your idea of the mushrooms! So smart!
I was so amazed at how these turned out!!! I’m still new to IP but this seemed like a recipe I could tackle! I had only one pound of ground turkey though but decided to give it a shot. I was worried the meat mixture would not hold and I would end up with a pile of mush!! But the meatballs held their shape and turned out perfectly in the IP!! I cooked them in two cans of gravy and served with mashed potatoes and veggies! Such a simple meal but the family loved it!! I’ll be adding this method to my favorites!! Thanks!!
Glad it worked out for you Linda!
Fantastic recipe! I doubled the recipe, which in turn doubled the water to 2 cups…got the burn warning. Some grocery sauces are thicker than others. So, next time I will add the water with an additional can of petite tomatoes I drained. Still a very good recipe that I will make again.
I made the sauce using frozen meatballs, 25 oz of jar sauce, lge can of diced tomatoes with no water and got a burn message. I suspect that some jarred sauces are thicker than others.
Right. Good call. I should make a note of that in the directions.
Hi there. Would I adjust anything for using an 8 qt size? Thanks.
Nope!
My first use of InstaPot. Meatballs came up amazing! Thank you for great recipe.
So glad Lydia! Keep using it you’ll love it!
I’m making a different recipe-deconstructed stuffed pepper porcupines so I added diced sweet red and yellow peppers, diced onion, and precooked rice to my beef/pork/mild sausage mix. Since the rice is already cooked the time should be the same.
One idea I found was to put the sauce in the IP and use the saute function (adjust to ‘less’) to preheat the sauce while forming the meatballs. Stir it a bit. This gives a little jumpstart but also allows the sauce to be stirred while heating to reduce the chance of sticking. I’ve seen a few people mention their sauce scorched. Adding water always helps but a homemade sauce might catch.
Lastly, I’ve made pasta in the IP with red sauce. Mix pasta, sauce and enough water so the liquid just peeks through the pasta. Use shapes-I like rotini. Time is 4-5 minutes on Manual. Four minutes works for me. One day I’ll try this with small raw meatballs, although using precooked frozen ones removes the worry of under-cooking.
Thanks for sharing.
I make these once a week! We love them! Thanks for a great recipe!
You’re so welcome 🙂
This looks so good, I’m making this right now in my crockpot express, like an instapot.
Nice!
Hi Karen,
I made your meatballs & sauce last month: It was a huge hit! Thank you for sharing.
I”m wondering if I can make meatballs without sauce so that they can be frozen for another time. When ground beef is on sale I like to stock up & if I could make the meatballs alone, no sauce, then I could freeze them on a cookie sheet, then pop into a Food Savor bag– take out what I need as needed.
Any ideas? Can I just use water in the pot? Perhaps put the meatballs up on the trivet? The pot in pot method would not work as the pot is too small to hold many.
Eagerly waiting your reply and thoughts.
I like the idea of making a bunch and freezing them. This will be a great time saver. I would probably use a trivet of some kind and place the meatballs on top. Even a steamer basket would work.
Hw much pasta? does it matter? Can I make without pasta?
You can totally make it without pasta. I just served mine over pasta I cooked on the stove. About 8 ounces.
This was a big hit with all! I will also try using all sauce (no water).
My question is…. Do you think this recipe could be doubled.
Thanks Karen, really enjoy most of the recipes. Skip
totally can be doubled.
Xlnt recipe. I used 2 lbs of ground turkey. I used a jar of pasta sauce 25 oz and added a can of Italian seasoned diced tomatoes. Plenty of liquid!
Ok so no water? Awesome!!
Just wondering, what size can of Italian seasoned diced tomatoes did you use? And also, did you need to adjust any of the other ingredients to account for the extra 1/2 pound of meat? Thanks!!
It is just my husband and I. Can I make 1/3 of the recipe, using 8 ounces of tomato sauce (but no water in that sauce), and put those ingredients in a pot inside the IP pot on top of the trivet? I would of course put 1 cup of water under the trivet………….thus creating pressure, but not diluting the sauce.
Yes, I think that will work great!
I’d like to try this. Is the jar of sauce not enough liquid? Do we really need to add 1 cup of water?
This I would actually like to know! I read several pressure cooker meatball recipes before making this one and they all add the extra liquid. I did it to be on the safe side. Try it and let me know how it works out and if your pot comes to pressure 🙂
I have made meatballs in the IP twice now using basically your recipe with only ground beef (& not adding in any water), and the first time they were perfectly fine! The second time, although the meatballs were still delicious, I got the “burn” notification on the screen. The bottom later was a tad burnt, but they were all still cooked thoroughly. Not sure what to make of that! Soo good regardless.
Hmmm, that is weird! I’m glad you still liked them 🙂