This easy 4 ingredients Instant Pot macaroni and cheese recipe is a family favorite! Just 8 minute cook time makes the perfect pressure cooker mac and cheese comfort food with bacon too if you like. Great after school snack for kids or side dish for dinner.
OH MY….this 4 ingredient Instant Pot macaroni and cheese is one of our favorite meals! I’ve made it in the slow cooker, stove top, and today made it in my new pressure cooker and seriously it was amazing + only took 10 minutes total! It’s one of my kids’ favorite Instant Pot recipes. (affiliate links present)
Instant Pot Mac and Cheese 5 Ingredients
Yes we’ve made the boxed version a lot, and I think I had it at least twice a week this way growing up, but making it from scratch is just amazing! You only really need 4 ingredients + 1 more would be some water. That’s a easy meal win in my book. 😉 Oh yum is right huh??
Pressure cooking is the way to go. Period. You don’t have to own this brand either. You can make the same thing in your Crockpot Express or as an easy Ninja Foodi recipe as well.
Table of contents
If you are new to pressure cooking we have a lot of easy one pot meal recipes for you here. To begin with let’s start with a few basic tips:
- Make sure to Bookmark our InstaPot recipes page. We add new ones each week!
- Then PRINT this —–> Instant Pot cooking times cheat sheet that will help you understand how long meat, vegetables and beans take to cook in your pressure cooker.
- I HIGHLY recommend you buy this non stick pot.
- You should know how to deglaze a pressure cooker after sautéing but it won’t have as many issues with this better liner.
For reference, this is the model I have (a 6 quart) and use for all recipe creations.
What ingredients do I need for mac and cheese?
- Noodles – elbow macaroni or small shells work
- Evaporated milk – if you don’t have any you could sub. for whole milk
- almond milk could be used for dairy free
- Shredded cheese – we love sharp cheddar but you could use a Mexican blend or Monterey Jack too
- some added parmesan cheese is a great add
- Water or chicken broth
- Butter or margarine to make a creamy sauce
Here are a few questions you might have right about now. We will show you how to make this just right with evaporated milk and shredded cheese, or dairy free.
If you are only cooking noodles and water it takes about 2 minutes. When adding evaporated milk and cheese for mac and cheese 2-3 minutes is suggested. Egg noodles are fastest at 1 minute on high pressure and a quick release.
Most time you would add dairy products at the very end. If they are left in too long you have the possibility of it burning or breaking down. This calls for the shredded cheddar to be added when the noodles are cooked, it only needs a bit of time to melt.
The alternatives would be if you used cheddar cheese soup as an ingredient and/or a processed product like Velveeta. I like to use fresh products and they should be treated gently, if cooked under high pressure it should only be a few minutes.
How to Make Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese Evaporated Milk
- Shred 3 cups of either cheddar (we like sharp), or a mixture of jack and cheddar
- Boil your noodles in the Instant Pot with water for about 3 minutes under high pressure
- adjust for gluten free pasta as that doesn’t take as long to cook
- Quick release, drain, and add the rest of your ingredients until melted
- Stir and enjoy
What noodles are best for mac and cheese?
You could use any sort of small or medium noodles you’d like, elbow macaroni is most common. I typically use whatever is in my pantry but squiggle multi colored pasta is fun to use sometimes. Do not use egg noodles as those cook too fast and don’t soak up the cheesy sauce like others do.
Can you add meat?
A few tbsp of bacon bits or precooked sausage is optional of course, you would need to precook those ahead of time. When you’re done you can dice pepperoni and other proteins to make Meat Lovers Pressure Cooker Mac and Cheese version that my husband loves.
Can you use milk in a pressure cooker?
Yes, for a short cook time. For this dish we add it in after cooking the noodles so no worries. If you needed a dairy free macaroni and cheese option for any recipe that calls for this you could use other alternatives such as coconut milk out of the can or almond milk. Take note that both of those are a bit sweeter so the overall flavor will be altered but great options nontheless.
If you let it sit the sauce will thicken a bit more but we think it is perfect as soon as the cheese is melted and serve it immediately with a pinch of bacon bits on top. It serves the 5 of us just fine with a side of salad for dinner. Here are quick directions but a printable version is available at the bottom.
How to Make Instant Mac and Cheese in Pressure Cooker
- If you want to make boxed Kraft mac and cheese in a pressure cooker we have instructions for that too, as well as stovetop homemade mac and cheese!
- You just add 1 1/2 c water
- Add the noodles from your box, stir well so the water becomes a bit murky meaning the slight powder on the noodles is washed off.
- Close lid and steam valve and set to pressure high for 3 minutes.
- Allow to naturally release for about 2 min.
- Add butter and allow it to melt.
- Pour in your packet of dry cheese and stir until dissolved.
- Turn IP off and unplug so it doesn’t continue to heat up. By now sauce should be a bit thicker and ready to serve.
Of course you can tweak this by folding in leftover meat to make it even heartier. We have done this with our brisket mac and cheese which is great.
Mac and Cheese for Two
If you have less people in your home you could cut this in half. I sometimes do not suggest that because if there isn’t enough cooking liquid the recipe won’t work. This one should be just fine to do so, easier to do so if you have an IP mini version.
Instant Pot mac and cheese recipe is a great after school snack because it’s so quick and easy. Now that I have teens at home they can make it all on their own which is nice. Sometimes if we had tacos the night before they will add that meat into the mix which makes it a hearty meal for sure.
More Instant Pot pasta recipes
- Instant Pot pizza pasta is a fun meal that kids love. Add all your favorite toppings.
- The easiest Instant Pot spaghetti is here. Low fat meal that is great with leftover beef or meatless.
- We have a lot of other cheap Instant Pot recipes to choose from here too!
- Add ground beef for a batch of Instant Pot cheeseburger macaroni
What should I serve with macaroni and cheese?
- Our Instant Pot broccoli takes a whopping 1 minute.
- Air fryer chicken nuggets are always a winner.
- With some beautiful roasted vegetables of course.
How do I reheat mac n cheese in the Instant Pot?
- Whether you are reheating this or mac and cheese with heavy cream, inside a pressure cooker is possible on saute low, with a few tbsp. of milk
- Stir until warm enough, remove immediately
- I like to put it in a bowl and add 1 tbsp of milk to the top
- Microwave for 30 seconds
- Then stir it and cook for another 30 seconds
- If you put a paper towel over the top to begin with it will keep in more of the moisture
Printable recipe withe nutritional information including calories and saturated fat below. Calculates with exact ingredients listed. There’s a video embedded within this post you can watch to see how we make it.
Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese
Equipment
- 1 pressure cooker
Ingredients
- 3 c noodles, macaroni or shell are good
- 4 c water
- 3/4-1 c evaporated milk, 1 cup if you don’t want it quite as thick
- 2 c cheese, shredded, can use more of course
- 3 tbsp butter, or dairy free plant based butter alternative
Instructions
- Add your water, macaroni noodles, and salt. Put your Instant Pot or pressure cooker on manual, high pressure, for 2 minutes. (3 minutes if you prefer noodles on the softer side)
- Lock lid on and close pressure valve.
- Do a quick pressure release when time is up, turn IP off. Carefully open the lid. Drain remaining water.
- Set IP to saute low and add your butter (allow to melt), then your evaporated milk (add 3/4 c. then when cheese is melted add remaining 1/4 c if you want it not as thick) then your cheese allowing it to melt and stirring until all cheese is melted and your macaroni and cheese is the consistency you want.
- To thin it out to your desired consistency add more evaporated milk, or regular milk.
- Turn IP off. By now sauce should be a bit thicker and ready to serve. Best when eaten immediately!
Video
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I am new to Instant Pot and this recipe sounds delicious. If I wanted to make it for one or two people, how wold I go about halving the recipe? I know that you just can’t do half of everything with the instant pot.
You could try and split it in half if you have a smaller pot, it should be fine I’d think.
Why evaporated milk? Why not 2%? I just don’t want to buy extra milk.
The evaporated milk acts as cream without all the calories and fat. It makes cheese dishes taste richer.
The cheese went all clumpy what did I do wrong with the Mac & Cheese still tasted good but would prefer the cheese not to be one big melted clump:(
Try adding the cheese slower so it doesn’t clump. I haven’t had this issue but I imagine that is what happened.
You need to grate your own cheese, package cheese has a coating and does not melt in this type of receipe
Agreed. Never (!!) make mac and cheese with pre-shredded cheese! It’s coated with anti-caking agents that can really degrade the end results.
Looks good..not exactly 4 ingredients.. but I’ll make it soon. ty
Your website has so many great recipes but also has sooooo many ads! They’re very distracting to the point of annoying. JMHO.
I love providing a free website for everyone to use and gather recipes. It is very expensive to run a website and ads provide the revenue necessary to keep it free for everyone to use.
So I rushed to make this about 3 min after my instant pot was delivered as dinner was late and i was depending on it to arrive earlier. I’m new to IP so I rushed reading the directions and doubled this and cooked it on Hugh. There was a LOT of water in the bottom. Was it supposed to be there? I am going to drain it to make the sauce but since that’s not in the directions I wanted to ask anyway.
If there is a lot of water yes I would drain it to make it thicker in the end. Different types of macaroni noodles cook a bit differently and some absorb more than others, thus the difference in amount of water left.
I have an 8qt ip yesterday I put A jar of spaghetti sauce and frozen meatballs in mY ip. I tried the soup stew button and it scoRushed on the bottom. What went wrong?
you have to have thin liquid in the instant pot or it will give you the burn notice. if you are just wanting to heat up the spaghetti sauce and meatballs do it with the bowl in bowl method.
Also curious if there is enough room to double the recipe. My husband is an avid cyclist who is always trying to carb up before a long ride, and eats a lot of pasta.
There probably would be for this one, yes. You should try my Instant Pot spaghetti recipe too, that makes a lot in just 10 minutes flat!
In a 6 qt can you double? Total newbie
Instant pot is wonderful. A definite time saver!