Instant Pot Pepper Noodles–thin spaghetti is tossed with tamari, pepper, ground sausage and shredded cabbage for an easy one pot meal with a lot of flare. To give it some extra kick drizzle sriracha on top of the noodles.
Get the SLOW COOKER version of the recipe here
Instant Pot Pepper Noodles
We’ve been making variations of this dish for many years now. My husband absolutely loves it! The inspiration from my Instant Pot Pepper Noodles comes from Rachael Ray’s Tingly Szechuan Pepper Beef Noodles. I loved figuring out how to make this dish all in one pot, the Instant Pot. I was nervous on how the noodles would turn out but it worked perfectly. No more will I bring the water to boil on the stove for the pasta while I brown the meat in another pan. One pot meals are the best!
Some recipes notes:
Is it spicy? Yes, it can be. If you’re adverse to spiciness then for sure don’t drizzle sriracha on your noodles! And if you want to make them bland enough for young children then you can cut the amount of black pepper in half and leave out the jalapeno.
Recommendations
Cabbage: I love using an entire head of cabbage in this recipe. It gives the meal a little crunch. You’ll probably think an entire head of cabbage is too much but once you add it in, it shrinks down a lot.
Chinese 5 Spice Powder*: You can find this next to all the other spices at the grocery store. It’s just a blend of cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and szechuan peppercorns.
More recipes you’ll love…
Instant Pot Chicken Margherita Pasta
What Pressure Cooker Did You Use?
To make Instant Pot Pepper Noodles I used my 6 quart Instant Pot Duo 60 7 in 1*. I love this Instant Pot because it has the yogurt making function which I use almost weekly. It has two pressure settings (high and low), and there are also little slots in the handles so that you can rest the lid there instead of putting it down on your counter-top.
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Instant Pot Pepper Noodles
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 2 minutes
- Total Time: 22 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
Description
Thin spaghetti is tossed with tamari, pepper, ground sausage and shredded cabbage for an easy one pot meal with a lot of flare. To give it some extra kick drizzle sriracha on top of the noodles.
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground sausage (you can use pork or chicken sausage)
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 jalapeno, seeds and pith removed, minced
- 1 (1 inch) piece of ginger, minced
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
- 4 cups water
- 1 (16 oz) package thin whole wheat spaghetti
- 1/3 cup tamari or low sodium soy sauce
- 1 head of cabbage, shredded
- Sriracha, for serving (optional)
Instructions
- Turn your Instant Pot to the saute setting (more). When the display says HOT add in the ground sausage. Break it up with a wooden spoon and brown it for about 3 minutes. Add in the onion and saute it with the meat for about 3 more minutes. Add in garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Don’t drain off excess grease.
- Stir in jalapeno, ginger, pepper and Chinese 5 spice. Pour in the water.
- Break the noodles in half and spread them evenly on top of the water. Press them down to submerge (as much as possible).
- Cover the pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is on sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 2 minutes. When the timer beeps after the 2 minutes is up perform a quick release by moving the valve to venting.
- Remove the lid and stir the contents of the pot. Stir in the tamari to coat the noodles. Remove the inner pot from the Instant Pot base. Toss the cabbage in and stir.
- Use tongs to serve the noodles. If you like extra heat you can drizzle with sriracha. Enjoy!
Notes
This can get a little spicy with the jalapeno, 2 full teaspoons of pepper and the sriracha. If you want to make it bland enough for young children leave out the jalapeno and cut the pepper in half. And obviously don’t drizzle their plates with sriracha.
To make gluten free: Use gluten-free noodles (decrease cooking time by 1 minute) and be sure to use the Tamari sauce as opposed to the soy sauce.
I used whole wheat spaghetti noodles. If you’re using white noodles they will probably only need a 1 minute pressure cook time.
I used my 6 quart Instant Pot Duo 60 7 in 1*.
- Category: Pasta
- Method: Instant Pot
Nutrition
- Calories: 387
- Sugar: 6
- Sodium: 767
- Fat: 12
- Carbohydrates: 49
- Protein: 20
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This recipe sounds wonderful! My question is about the size of the cabbage head you used. Cabbage heads can run from small to really large! Can you tell me what size head you used? Or how much it weighed? I ask because I once had a problem with using a whole head of cabbage in a recipe in my instant pot. It was too much and didn’t completely cook down.
Thank you. Really enjoy your recipes!
Oops! Just reread this recipe and see that the shredded cabbage is added at the end of the cooking time. That helps answer my question.
Thank you!
I usually use a small head or half of a large head
Hi! I just realized I bought regular whole wheat spaghetti instead of thin? Can I still use this? Do I cook it for longer? Thank you!
Should be totally fine. Use the same time!
I have this in the instant pot as we speak …. However I dumped the cabbage in there in the pressure cooker with the spaghetti . Am I going to have a mess on my hands ?
I bet it will be okay. The cabbage will be very soft. Let me know how it goes!
Anyone try to freeze it? Way more then we needed but was really good. We did pad Thai noodles cooking at 4 minutes in the instapot.
I haven’t tried freezing yet. I’m not sure how the pasta would do. I know lasagna freezer well but with thinner noodles I’m not sure.
~Can this be doubled? Would the cook time change?
~ How long would you cook this in the crock pot? I could cook the noodles separately.
Thanks!! It looks so perfect for my family (that eats a TON).
Here is the slow cooker version: https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/slow-cooker-peppery-beef-noodles/
And keep the same time for doubled: https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/how-to-double-instant-pot-recipes/
It has good flavor. I used only half a head of cabbage since that’s all I had, and it was plenty. I’m going to add a shredded carrot along with the cabbage next time. Good with the sriracha.
★★★★★
Good idea about the carrots!
Addition of the shredded carrot made it more eye appealing. Also added a diced red mini pepper.
★★★★★
Can I sub beef chuck instead?
You could but it would need to be cooked before you add in the noodles because they don’t take very long to cook. Beef chuck takes much longer to cook. Does that make sense?
Did you use plain cabbage, or Napa/Chinese cabbage? I’m going to add this to next weeks meal plan.
I just used plain cabbage.
This is crack! I made this Sunday and it was so good I made it again Wed. Gotta be the easiest recipe to make too. Good thing the cabbage offsets the starchy pasta 😉
★★★★★
Totally haha!!
I am psyched to give this one a try. I’ve never made anything from your site that is less than exceptional! My one question has to do with sauteing the meat. Is there any reason why I could not drain off the grease? Looking forward to your response.
Sure drain it off! Totally up to you.
Can I make a half recipe in my 6 quart Insta Pot?
Yes you can. Please read this article: https://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/how-to-halve-instant-pot-recipes/
Would plain ground chicken work?
Yes but you will probably want to add some seasonings to it.
When you say sausage is it sausage meat? Mince meat or sausages cut up I am English/Australian and sometimes I get recepie a wrong with the teanslation
I use ground breakfast sausage or ground italian sausage for this one. It is not the kind of sausage in casings. It looks like ground beef sort of.
Could you use sausage in casing but remove the ground meat from casing instead?
Yes you could!
Are you adding just cold raw cabbage?
Yes that’s right.
Where do you get Chinese 5 spice?
In the spice section of the grocery store.
If I am using gluten free quinoa noodles, which need to be boiled for 16 minutes when using stovetop method, how long would it take under pressure? Thanks.
I’m not sure on this at all. You might need to experiment a bit to get it just right. I would try 5 minutes to begin.
My husband loved it! It was easy to make too. Didn’t change a thing:)
★★★★★
so happy to hear this Lynn!
Has anyone made this in the 3 quart IP?
Woud Italian ground sausage work? I seriously don’t know what plain ground sausage is.
yes that will work just fine
How do you cut your time to one minute when the lowest mine will go is 5? Just stop it at one?
Are you using an Instant Pot? and the manual setting? Mine goes all the way down to zero. So you could set the timer to 5 minutes and then just watch for the timer to say 4 minutes and turn it off.
I received this recipe as part of a ground beef recipe collection, but I see sausage is the meat listed in the recipe. Can a pound of ground beef be substituted with good results?
Yes, I’ve done both.
Posted this around 3pm and it never showed up, so re-posting. I made this the other night and it’s now on my fav list. Leftovers are even better. I used white noodles and reduced the time to 1 minute (as the recipe notes stated). I usually shred my own cabbage but bagged coleslaw was on sale so used 2 bags, which is far less than a head of cabbage. I didn’t think I’d like the cabbage just thrown in at the end but it works for this recipe. I mixed in the first bag and it was hard to do so with the 2nd bag because the liner was full. I forgot how much I loved Chinese 5 spice. Thanks for sharing!
★★★★★
So glad you loved it!!!
I really wanted to like this so much… I did leave out the sausage because I’m a vegetarian, so I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, but I added a bit of extra water. The IP gave me its “overheat” warning and I ended up having to rescue the dish. The taste is lovely though. Anyone else have trouble?
Oh bummer! Not sure what happened???
Loved it so much that we made it a 2nd time and tried to turn it into our fave Thai dish, Pad See Ew. Worked pretty well, although my spices were off a bit. We subbed in sliced chicken tenderloin, 4 cloves garlic, added 2c grated carrots, 1lb flat rice noodles (broken in 1/2), 6c water, 3/4c soy sauce, 2T sugar and kept your spices the same. The family LOVED IT! Thank you for all your deliciousness!! I’m a changed cooker-woman now.
Sounds fantastic!
Could angel hair pasta be used if I cut the time down to 1 minute? This sounds yummy!
Yep totally.
Did you try this? I have regular spaghetti noodles and angel hair pasta. Wondering how the angel hair pasta worked out?