One of my Instant Pot meals from this week was to try out the meat sauce with pasta one pot meals. Only I used a tube of frozen pork sausage from Aldi. I figured it would be similar to using ground chuck. So I looked up several recipes online on how to cook it from frozen. That is where my mistakes happened.
I started out with 1 jar of sauce with 1 cup of chicken broth in the liner with the sausage on top. I cooked this on Manual on High for 25 minutes and QR. I forgot to put the trivet in the pot, so the meat was sitting in the liquid. That was my second mistake. Because the first one was putting the sauce in the pot during this stage.
When the pot went off, everything looked fine. I used a large spoon to break up the meat and it was all cooked, no pink. I added four more cups of chicken broth and 1 box of penne pasta. Then I put the lid back on and set it again for Manual on High, but this time for 5 min. Then I let it NPR when the time was up.
Well, the pasta was cooked, but it wasn’t as al dente as we normally liked. Then when I stirred everything together, I realized the sauce had started to burn a little on the bottom. It wasn’t that much, but I think it was a carryover from my first stage. On further research, I discovered the jar of sauce is added during the pasta stage and not the meat stage. It didn’t affect the taste, so no biggie.
Honestly, it was good, but kinda reminded me of Hamburger Helper more than anything. We ate it, but no one had seconds and the leftovers are still in the fridge. The guys say it was mostly the mushy noodles. So I either let it NPR too long and the noodles kept cooking, the initial temps were too hot because the sauce had already been heated, or 5 minutes is just too long for penne. Will I try making this again? Yup, cause even failure is okay since I have learned to try something different next time.
Has anyone been successful with al dente pasta in the IP? I would love to hear about it.