Instant Pot Ragu – Quick and Tasty!

Growing up in the ’90s, ‘spag bol’ was one of those mid-week, quick meals that everybody loved. Anyone with children knows that speed and accessibility are important at dinner time. I still remember enjoying my Mums Bolognese. Looking back on our family table everyone’s faces were covered! We eagerly chomped through our meal and mopped it all up with garlic bread mmm… My Instant Pot Ragu is a bridge between two worlds: quick and deeply flavoured.

I became more and more interested in food the older I got. I love reading about, learning about, trying and tasting authentic cooking. When I discovered that ragu is actually a dish that cooks slowly and is rich and deep in flavour I found myself a little bit obsessed with perfecting my own recipe. My Ragu became a Sunday meal that cooked low and slow and filled the house with a comforting smell from mid-morning. Now I’m a Mum in my 30s with a different goal – cook it quickly and make it tasty! I have different Ragus for different situations and this Instant Pot Ragu is all about speed.

Instant Pot for the win

A few years before having children my sisters bought us an Instant Pot for Christmas. It was a bit of a mystery to us at first, but boy have we given it some use since! I love one-pot cooking, especially in Autumn and Winter. The flavours that come from slow cooking are some of my favourites. In motherhood, I find speed fundamental to mealtime success. My Instant Pot Ragu is a great example of the corners we can — and should — cut if we want to feed our families fresh tasty food. The beauty of a pressure cooker is that you don’t have to wait all day and you don’t have to sacrifice on flavour either!

Ragu in a tent

Earlier this month we took our family camping. We have camped for years but camping with kids is a different experience and we knew it was worth packing the instant pot for feeding a crowd in a small space. Once the children were tucked up in bed, the adults sat down to a yummy Instant Pot Ragu, a glass of wine and the sound of rain on canvas… I just love it! But I needed to do a little bit of prep at home to make camp life easy.

Super Speedy Soffritto

A soffritto is the base of most sauces, stews and soups in Italian cooking. It’s typically made up of onions, celery and carrots but it can include garlic and other veg if the recipe calls for it. Before we left home I cheated and used my Magimix to make my soffritto. I was not looking forward to lots of chopping on an uneven surface after wrestling our tent up. If you have more time and you are in a kitchen instead of a tent then just finely chop the veg up, or buy a pre-made one! I usually aim for 3 parts onion, 1 part carrot and 1 part celery but on this occasion, I just grabbed the first things my hands touched. I keep my tops and tails for making my own salt free veg stock – which I will share with you down the line.

Instant Pot Newbies

A quick heads up. If you are new to the Instant Pot it’s worth noting that if you aren’t careful you can end up with a lot of liquid in your finished dish… In the five years that I have owned one, I still haven’t mastered the art of this in my own recipes. Because it is a pressure cooker, the seal keeps the steam in the pot and that steam turns to liquid. That’s why you have to be thoughtful about what you put in, less is more. Sauté mode is your best friend if you do slip up. If you find the dish has a little too much liquid at the end, you can cook this off on sauté mode. Instant Pot created a handy Top Ten Common Newbie Mistakes… it’s worth a read!

This recipe is for a crowd. I made enough for 6 adults and 4 small children.

Instant Pot Ragu – Quick and Tasty!

The flavours that come from slow cooking are some of my favourites. In motherhood, I find speed fundamental to mealtime success. My Instant Pot Ragu is a great example of the corners we can — and should — cut if we want to feed our families fresh tasty food. The beauty of a pressure cooker is that you don’t have to wait all day and you don’t have to sacrifice on flavour either!

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Prep Time 20 mins

Cook Time 40 mins

Course Dinner

Cuisine Italian

Equipment

• Instant Pot

Ingredients

  

• 3 small onions
• 2 carrots
• 2 sticks celery
• 900 g Minced Steak
• 4 cloves garlic finely chopped/ ideally minced
• 70 g tomato pure
• 50 ml red wine whatever you are drinking is usually good enough 😉
• 200 g passata
• 1 tbsp dried oregano at home I would use fresh rosemary but I left it and my camping store cupboard is limited
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

 

• Blitz the onions, carrots and celery to make your Soffritto.
• Set the instant Pot to Sauté mode, add Olive oil followed by the soffritto mix.
• Cook for 5 minutes until sealed. I always aim to get a light browning on the mix.
• Add your minced steak to the pot in stages. You want to brown the meat and cook off any liquid.
• Once all the meat is added follow with the chopped garlic and oregano then continue to brown the mix.
• Add the tomato puree, mix through and leave to cook for 3-5 minutes. This step is important because you are developing a rich flavour and you want your pan to be sizzling before any liquid goes in.
• Add red wine and mix through. At home, on the stove, I would add much more red wine but because the Instant Pot is a pressure cooker and retains moisture I only add 50ml.
• Add the passata – I don’t add passata if I am not using the Instant Pot. I do it here because the IP doesn’t seal the meat the same as on the stove. On the stove we can really brown the soffrito, the meat and the tomato puree… Colour is flavour! But in the IP you don’t get that same depth to the sealing. The passata helps to make a richer IP Ragu.
• Add pepper and salt to taste (I removed some pre-salt, which I cooked the next day for the children.)
• When you are happy with the seasoning, turn the sauté mode off, put the lid on and cook on the ‘meat stew’ setting, high pressure for 30 minutes. I left mine to self vent for a while while we got the kids to bed. To warm it up I put it back on to sauté for a few minutes.

Video

Notes

The best thing about Ragu is that you can make it your own! Across Italian culture you will see everyone has their own version. I have a few versions of my own. I would encourage you to make this recipe work for your family. Add some grated courgette to your soffritto, use white wine instead of red. You can cook it with turkey mince if you are trying to cut down on red meat! What really matters is that the people around your table are smacking their lips and feeling good for it!

Keyword instant pot ragu