Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce

Posted by Mike Vrobel in Pressure cooker, Sunday dinner, Weeknight dinner | 7 comments

Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce

When I was a kid, spaghetti with meat sauce was part of my mom’s regular rotation. We’re not even slightly Italian, but that didn’t matter to us kids – we loved it, especially with a cheap loaf of garlic bread.

Now I’m cooking for my own kids, and spaghetti night is still a fan favorite. I love traditional Ragu Bolognese – as a sunday dinner. This is a cheater weeknight version of a long simmered Italian-American ragu. I use my pressure cooker to bend time to my will, and use Italian sausage for a quick and easy flavor boost. Is it as good as a long-simmered sauce, lovingly stirred by grandma all afternoon? No, of course not. But it’s still made with love for my kids – just a little faster than Grandma used to make.

Video

Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce – Time Lapse [YouTube.com]

Recipe: Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce

Equipment

• 6 quart or larger pressure cooker (I love my Instant Pot Duo)

Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce

★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce recipe – using the pressure cooker to make a meat sauce with all day simmered flavor in about an hour.

• Author: Mike Vrobel
• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 1 hour
• Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
• Yield: 6-8
• Category: Pressure Cooker
• Cuisine: Italian

Ingredients

Soffrito

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• 1 large carrot, peeled and diced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian Seasoning

Everything Else

• 1/2 cup red wine or water
• 1 1/4 pounds hot Italian sausage (bulk sausage, or links with casings removed)
• 1 1/4 pounds sweet Italian sausage (bulk sausage, or links with casings removed)
• 1 cup chicken broth, preferably homemade, or water
• 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Fry the soffrito: Heat the oil in the pressure cooker pot over medium-high heat (Saute mode in an electric pressure cooker) until the oil is shimmering. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic. Sprinkle with the crushed red pepper flakes and kosher salt, then saute, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens, about 8 minutes.
2. Simmer the wine: Pour the wine into the pot and stir, scraping any stuck bits of onion loose from the bottom. Simmer the wine for 1 minute to boil off some of the alcohol.
3. Cook the sausage: Stir the sausage into the pot and cook, stirring often, until the sausage just loses its pink color, about 5 minutes.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients: Stir in the chicken broth and crushed tomatoes. Tie the herb sprigs together and toss them into the pot.
5. Pressure cook the meat sauce: Lock the lid on the pressure cooker, bring it up to high pressure, and cook at high pressure for 20 minutes in an electric PC, 16 minutes in a stovetop PC. Let the pressure to come down naturally, about 20 minutes.
6. Serve: Stir in the fresh ground black pepper, then taste the sauce for seasoning. Canned tomatoes and Italian sausage are usually highly seasoned, so you probably won’t need to add more, but if you have low-sodium tomatoes, the sauce may need some salt to taste sweet. Serve over pasta.

Notes

Instead of the dried herbs, you can use fresh herbs:
1 sprig fresh basil (3-4 large leaves plus stem)
1 sprig fresh rosemary
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
-add them with the tomatoes, and remove the stems before serving

Soffrito – diced onions, carrots, celery, and garlic

Cook the sausage until it is no longer pink (it needs more time in this picture)

Done!

Notes

• If you want to cut back on the fat in the sauce, skim as much fat from the surface of the pot as possible before serving. Or, make the sauce the night before, and refrigerate. The fat will float to the top and form a solid fat cap that you can easily scrape off. Reheat the sauce and it is ready to serve.
• 1 cup of chicken broth is the right amount to keep the tomaotes in this recipe from burning…in my Instant Pot pressure cooker. If the sauce is scorching on the bottom of your pressure cooker, try adding a second cup of chicken stock to the recipe, and don’t stir the tomatoes in, just float them on top of the pot.

Pressure Cooker Italian Meat Sauce

What do you think?

Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.

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