You have got to make our homemade Instant Pot macaroni and cheese recipe with 4 ingredients. It is a family favorite one pot meal cooked in 2 minutes with evaporated milk, cheddar cheese and butter to come out creamy and delicious.
OH MY….this 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, way better than boxed! It’s one of my kids’ favorite Instant Pot recipes my kids ask for after school every week now.
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! Just like at the restaurant but way cheaper and you can choose any sized noodles you like.
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.
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 homemade mac and cheese?
Noodles are typically small elbow macaroni style but small shells would work as well as you see here. The cook time is appropriate for this size, or medium would just be a bit more al dente.
Then you are going to want to add a can of Evaporated milk. This gives it a bit of sweetness but if you don’t have any you could substitute for whole milk instead. Cashew or almond milk could be used for dairy free if that was needed.
Shredded cheese and lots of it is needed. We love sharp cheddar but you could use a Mexican blend or Monterey Jack too.
You will need some salted Butter (Kerrygold is my favorite) or margarine to make a creamy sauce and water to cook the noodles initially.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have also added some chopped up pieces of leftover meat to make it even heartier like we did with our brisket mac and cheese which was great.
Can you make boxed macaroni and cheese in Instant Pot?
Yes….we took it a step further and figured out the directions for Kraft mac and cheese in a pressure cooker for you too. That one is great too because there is no draining required!!
Tips
If you have less people in your home you could cut recipe 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.
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.
Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
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.
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 frozen 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.
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!