Lasagna has never been so easy! No need to pre-cook noodles OR squeeze everything into a springform pan! Layer traditional lasagna ingredients right in the inner pot and dinner is ready in 40 minutes. A filling and comforting pasta dish could not be easier or more delicious.
Why This Recipe Works
I have decided to make 2020 the Year of Comfort Food. That’s what you all love anyway, so why bother with the other stuff?!
This comforting and super easy Instant Pot Lasagna seems like the perfect way to ring in the new year. It cooks even more quickly that its oven-baked counterpart with even more flavor (thank you, IP magic).
Recipe Ingredients
Meat mixture – Ground sausage and ground beef is our preference. Ground turkey is another healthy option or hot Italian sausage are also solid choices.
Ricotta cheese – Cottage cheese is an easy substitute.
Spaghetti sauce – Both spaghetti sauce and marinara are flavorful sauces that work well in lasagna.
Lasagna noodles – The oven ready version was not tested in this recipe; use regular lasagna noodles.
Cheese mixture – Mozzarella and parmesan cheese were used but cheddar or a blend will also work well.
How To Make Pressure Cooker Lasagna
Step 1
Set Instant Pot to saute. Add the sausage and beef to the pot. Cook, breaking meat apart with a spoon until it is no longer pink. Create a hole in the center of the meat and add olive oil. Add onion and garlic and cook until soft and fragrant, about 3 minutes.
Transfer meat mixture to a bowl. Press cancel on the Instant Pot and clean out the inner pot. Spray generously with cooking spray.
Step 2
In a medium bowl, combine the Ricotta cheese, 1 cup of the mozzarella, egg and Italian seasoning. Mix well.
Step 3
Layer in even layers as follows:
- 1/3 of the sauce on the bottom of pan
- 3 lasagna noodles, broken in thirds
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 of the meat mixture
- 1/2 of the cheese mixture
- 1/3 of the sauce
- 3 lasagna noodles, broken in thirds
- 1/2 of the meat mixture
- 1/2 of the cheese mixture
- 3 lasagna noodles, broken in thirds
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/3 of the sauce
- 1/2 cup Mozzarella cheese
- Parmesan cheese
Place the cover on the pot and set timer to 20 minutes on high pressure (pressure cook setting). It will take the pot around 20 minutes to build up pressure before it begins cooking.
When the cooking time is up, let the pressure release naturally on the pot for 5 minutes then do a quick release and allow the float valve to drop.
When the lasagna is done, let the pressure release naturally on the pot until the float valve drops. Let sit for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.
Recipe Notes
- Avoid pressing down on the mixture at any time during the layering process.
- To avoid seeing that dreaded burn notice, be sure to spray the inner pot generously and also make sure there is a thin layer of sauce lining the bottom of the pot before adding the rest of the layers.
- Carefully use spatula to lift content of pot off bottom if you see burn notice. Replace lid and set for remaining time. Natural release.
- Make the day before and refrigerate overnight and reheat in order to avoid soupy-ness.
- Cater the meat used in the recipe to your own choosing. We find that the combination of ground beef and pork make an extremely flavorful dish. Using one or the other, or even ground turkey will be tasty, too!
- Use either pasta sauce or marinara sauce for this recipe (same amounts required no matter which you use)!
- Extra spices that could be added to the meat mixture, if desired: garlic powder, onion powder, oregano or extra Italian seasoning.
- Cottage cheese can be substituted for ricotta cheese if you don’t have it or prefer a different texture.
- You can often buy Italian sausage in mild or hot and I like to add a little spice to the recipe by using hot. When it is mixed in with all the cheese and tomato sauce, the final dish isn’t too spicy, just extra flavorful.
What To Serve with Lasagna
Lasagna is the ultimate cheesy comfort food to prepare for dinner any night of the week. If it is on the menu for the day, read on for some delicious ideas about what to serve with lasagna!
Instant Pot Burn Notice
If you see that dreaded burn notice flash on your Instant Pot, do not fret! Know that your pressure cooker is keeping a good eye on your food. It has sensed that the temperature toward the bottom of the pot is too high and has therefore turned it off temporarily. It is giving you a chance to fix the problem!
This can happen especially with thick sauces or chilis because of the heaviness of the contents inside the pot. It can also happen if there is not enough liquid inside the pot.
If you see the burn notice, press CANCEL as soon as possible. Do an immediate quick release and wait for the silver float valve to drop. Carefully remove the inner pot and transfer to a hot pad holder. Use a spatula or silicone spoon to reach down the side and underneath the layers without disrupting it too much, separating the contents at the bottom of the pot from the pot itself.
Pour 1/2 cup of beef broth or water down the sides of the pot so it seeps to the bottom. Replace lid and continue cooking.
Quick Release (QR) VS Naturally Releasing (NR) Pressure in the Pressure Cooker
When a recipe calls for natural pressure release, this is instructing you to leave the pressure release in the sealed position when the cook time ends. It will release the pressure over approximately 30 minutes and then you’ll be able to open your lid.
Quick release or often written as QR is when you safely open the valve to release all the pressure inside quickly. You don’t want to be in the way of the jet of steam that comes quickly and loudly pouring out of the pot.
If a recipe calls for an 10-minute natural release the recipe is telling you to leave the IP alone for 10 minutes after the timer signifies it’s done. Then you open the valve to release any steam that is still hanging out inside.
FAQ About Instant Pot Lasagna
Press the cancel button immediately and remove the cover of your Instant Pot. Using a silicon spatula, carefully run it down the sides of the pot and underneath the layers at the bottom to separate the pasta from the bottom of the pot. You can add about a quarter cup water or extra sauce down the sides. Put the lid back on and set it to the number of minutes left to cook. Let the Instant Pot do a natural release (NR) until the float valve drops.
To prevent any soupiness for your lasagna, make this a day ahead and let it sit in the refrigerator. It will soak up the sauce and set well. Alternatively, you can do the same if you’re making it the same day. Allow the lasagna to cool down and sit in the refrigerator to set well. Then reheat the lasagna for the perfect piece of lasagna!
Cool your lasagna and place it in an air tight container. It’ll keep in your refrigerator for up to 5 days. If you determine you’re going to freeze it, it’ll keep about 3 months.
Easy Comfort Foods To Warm You UP and Fill You Up
Recipes To Make Using Pasta Sauce
Aside from the obvious reason (the amazing FLAVOR!), my favorite thing about pasta sauce is that it is so versatile. Here are a few ideas for ways to enjoy it!
- Pour it over the top of cooked noodles of any kind.
- Use it in place of store-bought sauce in your next pan of Baked Spaghetti or Baked Ziti!
- Lasagna cooked traditionally is sooo good when made with spaghetti sauce.
- Use it as an ingredient to stuff spaghetti squash with!
- Add it to your morning eggs because everything tastes great with eggs.
- Top scrambled eggs with a few spoonfuls!
Instant Pot Lasagna Recipe {no inner pot required!}
Equipment
- Pressure Cooker
Ingredients
- 1/2 lb ground sausage
- 1/2 lb ground beef
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 yellow onion chopped
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 8 oz ricotta cheese
- 1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese shredded
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 cup water
- 28 oz spaghetti sauce substitution: marinara
- 9 lasagna noodles
- 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Set Instant Pot to saute. Add the sausage and beef to the pot. Cook, breaking meat apart with a spoon until it is no longer pink. Create a hole in the center of the meat and add olive oil. Add onion, garlic, salt and pepper and cook until soft and fragrant, about 3 minutes.
- Transfer meat mixture to a bowl. Press cancel on the Instant Pot and add 2 tbsp olive oil. .
- In a medium bowl, combine the Ricotta, 1 cup of the mozzarella, egg and Italian seasoning. Mix well.
- Layer in even layers as follows: 1/3 of the sauce on the bottom of pan, 3 lasagna noodles, broken in thirds, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 of the meat mixture 1/2 of the cheese mixture, 1/3 of the sauce, 3 lasagna noodles, broken in thirds, 1/2 of the meat mixture, 1/2 of the cheese mixture, 3 lasagna noodles, broken in thirds, 1/2 cup water, 1/3 of the sauce, 1/2 cup Mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese.
- Place the cover on the pot and set timer to 20 minutes on high pressure (pressure cook setting). It will take the pot around 20 minutes to build up pressure before it begins cooking.
- When the lasagna is done, let the pressure release naturally on the pot until the float valve drops. Let sit for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.
Notes
- Avoid pressing down on the mixture at any time during the layering process.
- To avoid seeing that dreaded burn notice, be sure to spray the inner pot generously and also make sure there is a thin layer of sauce lining the bottom of the pot before adding the rest of the layers.
- Carefully use spatula to lift content of pot off bottom if you see burn notice. Replace lid and set for remaining time. Natural release.
- Make the day before and refrigerate overnight and reheat in order to avoid soupy-ness.
- Cater the meat used in the recipe to your own choosing. We find that the combination of ground beef and pork make an extremely flavorful dish. Using one or the other, or even ground turkey will be tasty, too!
- Use either pasta sauce or marinara sauce for this recipe (same amounts required no matter which you use)!
- Extra spices that could be added to the meat mixture, if desired: garlic powder, onion powder, oregano or extra Italian seasoning.
- Cottage cheese can be substituted for ricotta cheese if you don’t have it or prefer a different texture.
- You can often buy Italian sausage in mild or hot and I like to add a little spice to the recipe by using hot. When it is mixed in with all the cheese and tomato sauce, the final dish isn’t too spicy, just extra flavorful.
EPIC FAIL. I kept getting the add water error. So 3 times I added more water. didn’t want soup. I laddled out 2 bowls of water and put it on bake. Terrible experience and I followed the recipe Step by Step.
My husband and I love this . We make with ground turkey .
That’s a great idea! Thanks for sharing it.
The only good thing about this is that it taught me to read comments on online recipes. I don’t know what I’m going to do because I’ve got a huge soupy mess on my hands and a scorched instant pot. I’ve added so much water and broth to it that it’s going to have to be eaten with a spoon and it’s still not done. It has yet to make it to pressure without a burn notice.
Great recipe! I put a thick layer of sauce on the bottom, mixed minced garlic in the ricotta, and put crushed tomatoes with the sauce layers. Never got a burn notice. I let it sit and naturally release for 20 min. Perfect lasagna! Not watery at all. Thanks!
I love this method too. Thank you for sharing how it went for you.
The burn light came on once, then I followed the instructions above. The burn light never came back on and the lasagna was AWESOME! No burnt bottom or dried out edges like in the oven. Thank you for this tip so I didn’t have to buy an extra pan. I WILL make this recipe again 🙂
Teresa I’m so glad you had it turn out. I loved this format of preparing it and I’ve been trying to troubleshoot some others issues to fix this recipe. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Megan, before I cook your lasagna recipe, I’m wondering if you’ve tweaked it to address the reviewers’ concerns? You wrote that you were going to and as I have all my ingredients ready to go…
Ryan, good question. I haven’t had the same result others have had so my tweaks aren’t perfected yet. I’ve really enjoyed preparing it this way. But I intend to follow up on this.
Your recipe for lasagna did not turn out quite like I would’ve hoped. Tried someone else’s recipe before but used the cottage cheese and spinach and it was OK it was better than what I got today. today was a thick lasagna porridge. Not happy, dog is though!
I regret not reading the comments before I invested time and ingredients with this recipe. I also got the burn notice twice and scalded my pot. Total waste of time, at least the soupy mess is now in the oven, hoping to salvage what is left of the lasagne. With this amount of complaints and failures, you really should do us a favor and pull this recipe from your blog.
I’m sorry that it didn’t turn out. I’m not removing it because I’ve had a lot of success with it but I am working on tweaking the recipe so I can address these problems. My assistant got the burn notice but the entire meal was cooked and able to be enjoyed. I appreciate your honesty though and understand the frustration.
Epic holiday failure. Burn light on five times so far. Going to see if it can be salvaged in the oven. Had fun with my daughter giving it a try so not a complete failure.
I’m sorry that happened. It’s hard to have a meal not turn out when you’re working hard on it and hungry. Often times I’ve had a burn notice come on and the recipe was completely cooked because the pressure still did its thing but mainly it’s telling us that we need to make sure there’s enough liquid within the pot to achieve pressure. You can open your lid and add some to the pot – you could use water or broth, then close it up and start it again. I’m glad you had fun with your daughter! Using the IP a few times really lets you get the hang of it and each model is a little bit different but there’s so many great recipes to come out of an IP that you wouldn’t expect to turn out amazing (hard boiled eggs, cheesecake and boxed cake mix to name a few!)
Terrible recipe! I got the burn notice so many times that I had to go pick up food! Will never use again! Used all the suggestions give. And did not work !
This is a tasty recipe. Just a little stuck on the bottom, not as bad as the others had. I sprayed a lot but will add more broth next time. I added chicken sausage to the ground meat & it was delicious. It took 20-30 min to get to pressure to cook. Then I’d say it needed 20 min to cool as its boiling hot for a while! That’s from it being in a deep pot instead of a flat dish. Delicious, will make again!
I also got the burn message on my 8 at IP. I was disappointed because it seemed like a fairly easy and tasty dish. It is in the oven now and I am not sure when it will be done or how it will taste. It smells good but is really soupy. I think I might just stick with the old fashioned way.
This burned three times on the bottom of my instant pot. I won’t be using this recipe again.
I also got a burn notice a few times even though I tried lifting the noodles to add more water underneath. Ended up mixing it all together and cooking as stated in the recipe. It’s essentially a soupy baked ziti. It tastes good though. I have a 6qt IP.
I wish I had read the comments, I also got the burn message. Total waste of time and ingredients AND I have nothing to serve my family tonight.
Beth, that is very frustrating. I’m sorry that happened. I haven’t had any trouble replicating this recipe so my suggestion is to just use more liquid than less to try and make up for the pressure that’s being built with the water I put in. Double it.
Like the others above finished it in the oven. Kept saying burn and stuck bad. Oh well. Ya live and learn. Probably be ok with the spring pan.
I’m sorry that happened – so frustrating. Did you find that it happened pretty quickly or later in the cooking? What size IP do you use? Thank you for sharing.
It happened really early in the process on my 8 qt IP.
Is it okay to use oven-ready?
I haven’t tried it myself in the IP but in trying it in the oven, I haven’t seen it get too mushy so I believe it’ll work just fine. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!
Do you use regular or oven ready noodles?
Hi Brad, I used regular lasagna noodles in this recipe. Good question!
I kept getting a burn notice for this recipe as well. I followed the recommendations to add more liquid (water) and try to lift the bottom (which is difficult to not turn it into a soupy mess) but it was no use.
I’m sorry to hear that Emily. That is really frustrating when you’re trying to get dinner on the table. I am unsure what’s causing the burn notices because there is so much liquid in the sauce. I’ve not gotten that response in my own tests of this recipe either. My suggestion would be to coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil and add a generous amount of sauce, more than you normally would. What size IP are you using? Have you ever had a burn notice otherwise? I’d like to help you avoid this because its such a good recipe. Thank you for reaching out!
The dish itself is delicious. I used ground turkey and followed the directions as listed. I got the burn notice twice and both times did a QR and adjusted the pasta so that liquid went to the bottom. It was no use. I finally put in a baking dish and put in the oven for 20 minutes. So now it’s messy looking lasagna and the bottom of my inner pot is SO burned!
I’m sorry to hear that happened. Not what you want to happen when you are preparing dinner! I haven’t had that issue and there’s a lot of sauce and liquid in the recipe so it shouldn’t happen. What size IP do you use? I’ve had people tell me that when they use a 8 qt vs 6 qt that more liquid has been needed when making recipes. I haven’t tested this out myself.
I followed this recipe exactly and keep getting a burn notice. At this point, I may just have to throw the Whole thing away :(. I even opened it up to add more liquid but it looked every watery. Not sure what to do.
I’m sorry that you had that happen. The best thing to do if you receive a burn notice on ANY instant pot recipe is to add a little more liquid, making sure it gets to the bottom of the pot. You can use broth, water, tomato sauce, whatever works best for that recipe. The burn notice often doesn’t mean it is burnt, it just is alerting you that it needs more liquid to continue the pressure needed to cook. In this recipe, just use a spatula to get the pasta lifted and move the tomato sauce around to cover the bottom again. Add some more beef broth if needed. Then you can set it back to cook. I’m sorry that you had this issue but be assured that everyone who uses the IP has to learn this but you’ll be a pro in no time.
I love the ease of making lasagna in the IP! Not having to stuff the ingredients in a cake pan or a pan for the IP was so nice, no bubbling over mess. I used your marinara recipe to make the sauce and it was tasty!