Pressure Cooker Olive Garden Pasta E Fagioli Soup

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This winter has been cold, blistery, and never-ending, and my kids have had more snow days than I can count.   The way I see it is that I can sit around and complain about it.  Or I can sit around and warm myself up with some copycat Olive Garden Pasta e Fagioli soup!

Since my husband has been traveling for work a lot lately, and I made three batches of this soup to get it right, I have eaten it for lunch and dinner for more than a week.  And I am more than okay with this!  This soup is warm, comforting, flavorful, and made with lots of good stuff!

There are a few things that you should note about this recipe:

1. Carrots.  When I cook tomato-based food. Especially in Italian food, I add about twice as many carrots as an average person does.  Carrots are a natural sweetener and reduce the acidy of tomato-based food.  You don’t have to add as many carrots as I did, but I highly recommend it!  You will also find carrots as the secret ingredient in my tomato soup recipe.
2. Beans.  If you watch the video below, you will see that I didn’t add the beans until after the pressure cooker process had ended.   I don’t like beans to be mushy in soups, so I added them later.
3. Pasta.  I cooked the pasta separately and kept it in the fridge until it was time to eat the soup.  I love my Italian food to be al dente, so that is what I recommend.

I used an Instant Pot duo for this recipe, but I will add slow cooker instructions for this below too.

Here is a video I created for you to see the step-by-step instructions I used for this recipe.

Pasta e Fagioli means ” pasta and beans” In Italian.  It is a hearty soup that is rustic, budget-friendly, and only made from delicious ingredients.  I first made this soup during a snow day a few weeks ago, and my kids just loved it!  I love how my pressure cooker makes soups.  They taste like they have been slow cooking all day, but they come together in only a few minutes and taste fantastic!

I decided to tackle this recipe because I wanted more comfort food, but I have made so much chili this year that I needed a new flavor profile in my house.   You can make this soup without meat or beans, or even with gluten-free pasta.  It will taste delicious either way you fit it into your lifestyle!

5 from 2 votes

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Pasta e fagioli soup

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 pound Italian sausage
• 1 small yellow onion chopped
• 5 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 32 ounces chicken broth
• 3 15 ounce cans tomato sauce
• 1 cup water
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1 can northern white beans
• 2 cups Ditalini pasta

Instructions

Pressure Cooker Instructions

1. Set your pressure cooker to saute.  Brown ground beef and Italian sausage. .Drain and set aside.  

2. Set your pressure cooker to saute.  Pour olive oil in the bottom of your pressure cooker pan.  Add onions and cook until transparent. 

3. Add celery, carrots, garlic, spices, the cooked meat, tomato sauce, water, and the chicken broth. 

4. Put the lid on your pressure cooker, and cook on high pressure for 20 minutes.  Let your pressure cooker naturally release. 

5. Set your pressure cooker to saute, and add both cans of beans.  Let the soup saute for about 10 minutes.  

6. Cook your noodles on a stove top.  Keep them in a bowl, separate from the soup until you are ready to eat if you are warming up individual servings.  I recommend that you heat the soup, then add the noodles in the right before eating. 

Slow Cooker Instructions

1. Cook the meat on the stove and drain. Set aside.  

2. Cook the onions in the olive oil on the stove until they are translucent and set aside.  

3. Place meat, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, spices, tomato sauce, water, and chicken broth in your slow cooker and cook on slow for 4-6 hours. 

4. Add the beans about an hour before the cooking process ends. 

5. Cook the pasta separately and add the pasta to individual bowls of soup when you are ready to eat.  

Like I mentioned above.  I have made this soup several times over the last few weeks to get it right.  I made this with only ground beef and with the ground beef/Italian sausage combo.  Although I decided that the ground beef/Italian sausage combo was best, this recipe is also delicious if you use ground beef only.   This soup is such a colorful bowl of comfort, and this will be added to my regular winter dinner rotation!