Pressure Cooker Lasagna Soup

Lately, we have been taking dinner to Scott's mother every Wednesday night, and so I have been on the lookout for lots of recipes that are easy to travel with, like Crock Pot or Instapot. This week's recipe was this lasagna soup, and everyone really liked it, even Lucas, who doesn't like ricotta cheese (he was okay with it because it was a topping so he could put as much or as little on as he liked). Here is the link to the original recipe:

https://www.melskitchencafe.com/pressure-cooker-lasagna-soup/

Pressure Cooker Lasagna Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground Italian sausage or ground beef
• ½ cup finely chopped yellow or white onion
• ½ cup diced carrots, about 2 medium carrots
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed through a garlic press
• 3 cans (15-ounces each) crushed tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 dried bay leaf
• ½ teaspoon salt, I use coarse, kosher salt
• Pinch of black pepper, I use coarsely ground
• 6 to 8 cups chicken broth, I use low-sodium (see note)
• 8 to 12 ounces (3-4 cups) bowtie or rotini pasta or broken lasagna noodles (see note)

Cheese Topping:

• 1 cup ricotta cheese or blended cottage cheese
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese, plus more for serving
• ½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• Pinch of salt and pepper

Directions:

1. For the cheese topping, stir together all the ingredients until well combined. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
2. For the soup, select the sauté function on the pressure cooker and cook the sausage or ground beef, onion, carrots, and garlic, for 2-3 minutes, until the meat is no longer pink, breaking the meat into small pieces as it cooks. Drain any excess grease.
3. Add the crushed tomatoes, basil, oregano, bay leaf, salt and black pepper. Stir well, making sure to scrape up any cooked bits on the bottom of the pot.
4. Add 6 cups of the chicken broth and the pasta and stir to combine. Give the bottom of the pot another good scrape (otherwise any cooked food on the bottom of the pot may alert the burn warning when the pressure cooker comes to pressure).
5. Secure the lid and set the pressure cooker to cook on high. Use this formula for the cooking time (and read the note below): take the al dente cooking time on the pasta package, cut the time in half and subtract two more minutes. For instance, for pasta that cooks al dente in 12 minutes, the pressure cooker time will be 4 minutes. Round up for 1/2 minutes.
6. When the cooking time is finished, let the pressure naturally release for 10-15 minutes (otherwise liquid may spurt out of the valve when releasing pressure). Manually release remaining pressure or let it naturally release all the way (pasta will be a bit softer if doing this since it will continue to cook a little as the pressure naturally releases).
7. Stir the soup and add additional chicken broth to thin, if needed (I add about 1 to 2 additional cups). Serve the soup in bowls with spoonfuls of the cheese topping and additional mozzarella or Parmesan cheese on top.

Marsha's Notes:

• I didn't add the garlic to the beef right away, as I have heard over and over again that if you cook garlic too long (or burn it) that it will turn bitter, so I added my garlic to the pot the last couple minutes that the beef was browning. It also took me a lot longer than 2-3 minutes to cook the meat, even with the sauté function on high.
• Initially, the soup seemed the perfect consistency right after it was done cooking. Then, by the time we took it across town to Scott's Mom's house, and everyone ate what they wanted, and then we brought the leftovers home, the noodles had absorbed so much of the liquid in the soup that we were really just left with pasta and sauce, like spaghetti instead of soup. That's okay. It still tastes delicious, but if you want it to remain "soup" then you might want to add the extra liquid suggested in the recipe, either right away, or just a little bit to each bowl when you reheat it as leftovers.