Sometimes you just need a bowl of stick to your ribs, succulent meaty pasta. And this Simple Instant Pot Beef Ragù does just the trick but with some added perks. It doesn’t have a long list of ingredients, which means not much at all to chop and the Instant Pot does most of the work for you. The result, you end up with a fork-tender, shreddable meat and tomato sauce in under an hour. But even if you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can still make this, be pretty hands off and have dinner in about 2 hours of low and slow cooking.

While many ragù recipes I have made call for a few more ingredients like celery, red wine or stock and other herbs and spices, I wanted to make one that only needed a few staples but still tasted phenomenal. These days, ingredients like fresh celery, organic beef broth or even red wine aren’t always the easiest to come by for us, so I really wanted to just work with what I had. And our favorite pasta sauce is none other than Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato, butter and onion sauce so I figured I would go that route. I included some carrot for good measure and a little garlic. The results, for me at least, rivaled some of the more gourmet (if you will) ragù sauces I’ve had and the rest of my crew concurred in the form of bowls licked clean.

The steps for the Instant Pot are pretty similar to stovetop. Start by browning the seasoned meat on all sides and set on a plate while you melt the butter and add the garlic, carrots and tomatoes with their juices to the pot. The Instant Pot cooks it in about an hour total, including the time it takes to come up to pressure. On the stove it will take about two. In either method, when the meat is finished, remove it from the pot while you gently puree the sauce. This is generally not done for ragù, but we do this to the tomato-butter sauce as my funny kids don’t like chunks of tomatoes so I did it here, and quite liked the results. I leave the onion out when I puree it because that soft, slightly caramelized onion deserves to be eaten just the way it is.

As far as what to serve the ragù over, we love it with pasta, any kind really. Pappardelle definitely reigns supreme with ragù (for good reason.) Gnocchi is super yummy too. But penne is what we can most easily get our hands on these days and you won’t find us complaining about that. The littles tunnels in the noodles are good hiding spots for the sauce. Should you not want or have pasta, other options like mashed potatoes or creamy polenta would be great as well. You really can’t go wrong. In fact, scooping the leftovers up with just some crusty bread is always a winning combo too. Buon appetito.