Not only do these delicious italian-style meatballs take fewer than 15 minutes to cook in the instant pot, cleanup is a breeze because there's no need to brown them first; the meatballs are cooked right in the sauce. If you make the pasta while the meatballs and sauce cook, you'll have a spaghetti dinner on the table in record time. Or skip the pasta entirely and pile them into meatball sandwiches. If you're following a keto or low carb diet, serve the meatballs and sauce with spiralized summer squash, zucchini noodles, or spaghetti squash. While a flavorful seasoned tomato sauce is included, feel free to streamline the recipe with about 4 to 6 cups of purchased sauce or your favorite homemade sauce. If you do use an alternative sauce, it might have to be adjusted for the instant pot. A pressure cooker relies on a certain amount of liquid to create the steam it needs and can have difficulty reaching full pressure when a sauce is a bit thick. For this reason, the sauce is thinned slightly with water or beef stock and the tomato paste is added when the sauce is done. If the finished sauce is thinner than you like, just continue cooking for 5 to 10 minutes with the instant pot on the saut setting until it has reduced and thickened.
