This Instant Pot Ground Chicken Pasta is made using jar sauce. It's simple, easy, healthy, and a quick chicken and pasta for dinner!
This ground chicken pasta recipe is a weeknight dinner winner! The pasta and minced chicken cook together in the pressure cooker, making it super easy and flavorful. Once you try it, you’ll find yourself making it again and again—my family enjoys it about once a week!
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Reasons to love
- Ready in under 30 minutes — Whip up pasta dinner fast without compromising flavor.
- Pressure cooker convenience — Everything cooks together in one pot for minimal mess.
- Jar marinara to the rescue — Just dump and go.
- Quick and easy — Perfect for busy nights when you want a hearty meal and easy cleanup.
- Great for using up a pound of ground chicken — A tasty dinner solution if you're short on time.
Instant Pot Ground Chicken Pasta
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 pound ground chicken
- ½ cup chopped onion
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 cups marinara sauce (I used prego, tomato basil & garlic)
- ¾ cup water
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 ¼ teaspoon salt or use as needed
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 8 ounces penne pasta
- ¼ cup grated parmesan
- chopped basil
Instructions
- Heat instant pot to saute mode.
- When hot, add olive oil. Stir in ground chicken, onion and garlic. Saute for 3 to 4 minutes, breaking the lumps.
- Press cancel, add marinara sauce, water, Italian seasoning, salt, red pepper flakes and black pepper. Mix to combine.
- Place the pasta on top and gently press it into the sauce, using the back of a spoon, making sure that they are mostly immersed into the sauce.Pro tip: Avoid stirring the pasta! Simply layer it on top of the sauce to prevent the "Burn" warning. The sauce acts as a barrier, protecting the bottom of the pot and keeping the pasta from sticking or burning.
- Cook on manual for 5 minutes. Let it be in warm mode for an additional 4 minutes.
- Release pressure, open and stir in parmesan and chopped basil.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information, based on third-party calculations, should be seen as estimates, not guarantees, as various factors like product types, brands, processing methods, and more can alter the nutritional content in recipes.
How to make ground chicken pasta in instant pot?
You can find full printable recipe below, but here is a quick overview of the procedure along with step-by-step photos.
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👩🍳 Pro tip: Avoid stirring the pasta! Simply layer it on top of the sauce to prevent the "Burn" warning. The chicken mince sauce acts as a barrier, protecting the bottom of the pot and keeping the pasta from sticking or burning.
Step 9 - Give the penne pasta a stir and mix in chopped basil and grated parmesan.
Recipe tips
- Use any medium-sized pasta instead of penne for thic chicken basil pasta.
- Adjust salt based on the type of red sauce used. I used Prego and found 1 ¼ teaspoon to be perfect in the instant pot shrimp pasta.
- The sauce may seem a bit thin when you first open the Instapot, but it thickens up nicely as it cools for a few minutes.
- Use ground turkey instead of chicken - both make great protein for pasta!
More ground chicken & pasta recipes for dinner
- Baked Ziti with Chicken is an easy, cheesy oven-baked pasta casserole made with ricotta and ground chicken.
- Cheesy Baked Chicken Meatballs in Sauce are perfect to serve woth spaghetti or any cooked noodle.
- Baked Chicken Veggie Meatballs are made using carrot and cauliflower and then oven-baked to perfection. They’re a fantastic way to sneak in vegetables for picky eaters! Enjoy them served alongside cooked pasta.
I hope you love this delicious and easy recipe – be sure to give it a review below! Also don’t forget to follow Kitchen at Hoskins on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube!
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Katherine | Love In My Oven
Sounds like the perfect easy dinner for a busy weeknight this fall, Maria! I love that you used ground chicken. It's a nice change from beef sometimes!!
Jodi
Love making recipes where I have all the ingredients. But I got the burn notice twice on my Instant Pot. So I scraped the bottom and added some more chicken broth but still burned on the bottom and never got to finish cooking. But the pasta was done so we ate it.
Maria Doss
That's no good! This is a standard measurement for all our instant pot pasta recipes and they usually work out very well. You can check out a very similar, hugely popular recipe - https://www.kitchenathoskins.com/instant-pot-chicken-parmesan-pasta/. That being said, I'm very sorry about the burning part.I will go back to see if the liquid measurements was right and the valve was at sealing position. Hope it helps:)
Jennifer
I’m making this for dinner tonight and just got the burn notice too. I turned off the IP and put the lid back on to let the pasta cook a bit more. Hopefully that’ll work!
Maria Doss
Hi Jennifer, I hope it worked out for you. However, we have updated the recipe with a clever trick that avoids the dreaded BURN signal. Thanks, Maria
Zoya
Mine started to burn too and had the burn notification
Maria Doss
I'm extremely sorry that this recipe did'nt work for you. Some instant pots are better suited to not burn when the pasta is not stirred into the liquid, like in this recipe - https://www.kitchenathoskins.com/instant-pot-chicken-parmesan-pasta/#recipe. Hope it helps! Happy holidays - Maria