Making pasta with feta cheese and basil is nothing new. However, because of popular culture and social media, this dish has become quite famous of late. The original recipe is an oven baked recipe which is actually causing feta cheese shortages at some supermarkets! My question was, of course: can we make a similar dish in an Instant Pot pressure cooker? And the answer is – absolutely!

What do I need to make this recipe?

Our Instant Pot version of this recipe uses very basic ingredients. You don’t need to a block of feta cheese (but you can), crumbled feta is just fine. We’ll actually be melting it along with some other ingredients to make a sauce that is out of this world. You will need:

An Instant Pot pressure cooker (we use a 6qt) 16oz cavatappi pasta (the corkscrew stuff with ridges) 8oz feta cheese (crumbled is fine) Fresh basil Cherry tomatoes Chicken broth Garlic powder Parmesan cheese Optional: Extra cherry tomatoes, basil and feta for additional topping.

Just Prep and Go

The total prep is really just chopping the fresh basil. After that, add the pasta and broth first and give it a good stir. This allows the broth to thoroughly coat all the pasta. Then add the cheeses on top, followed by the fresh basil and cherry tomatoes.

Pressure cook for 5 minutes

I love making pasta dishes in the Instant Pot. You don’t need to get out a large strainer or drain any liquid. The Instant Pot will cook the pasta in the broth to perfection without any need to drain. Then you simply stir everything together and you’re ready to serve. It’s really that easy. The tomatoes will soften and combine with the cheese and basil to create the most wonderful sauce.

How to serve

As mentioned, the cheese and tomatoes and basil will all combine into a sauce. But, you can really bring this recipe to life by adding… more feta, fresh cherry tomatoes and more fresh basil! Yep, you don’t need to add much, but just a little of each served over the freshly cooked and warm pasta with sauce will be amazing. I also like to add some freshly course ground black pepper.