Instant Pot Fresh Tuna Casserole is a delightfully delicious comfort dish that boasts fresh tuna, onions, celery and cream. Skip the canned goods and go for the best!
Buh bye cans! We’ve remade one of our favorite comfort foods. No canned tuna and no canned soups. Plus, it’s all made in the pressure cooker
You can’t deny the fact that you LOVE tuna casserole. Right? Well we thought it was high time this classic got a make-over. Fresh tuna and no canned soups allowed. And, we want it done faster. Pressure cooker fast!
It took three tries to get the liquid to pasta ratio right. We wanted this one to be perfect. That whole pasta/liquid thing is a bit troubling with pressure cooker
Take a gander and see how we did it…
I know… you’re clawing at your screen. Don’t worry. We’ve got the recipe right here for you in that handy-dandy little print-out below.
Give it a try and let us know how it tickled your fancy. We’d love to hear from you!
If you’d like to subscribe to our Youtube channel, here’s a handy dandy link for ya —> HappyBellyFoodie Youtube Channel. It’d tickle me pink if you’d join us there, too!
Have a fantastic day and as always, keep it delicious!
Till next time ~ much love, Connie
Instant Pot Fresh Tuna Casserole
Ingredients
- 2 C pasta elbow mac
- 1 C onion
- 1 C celery
- 3 ½ C chicken stock
- 2 tsp salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 8 oz fresh tuna
- 3 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp all purpose flour
- ¼ C heavy cream
- 1 C frozen peas
- 1 C buttery crackers crushed
- 1 C shredded cheddar
Instructions
- Preheat pressure cooker on sauté.
- Pour in the pasta, onion, celery and chicken stock.
- Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Place the fresh tuna on top.
- Close the lid and turn the steam release valve to closed.
- Press keep warm/cancel button.
- Press manual and adjust the time to 5 minutes.
- In a sauté pan, heat the butter on med/hi.
- Stir in the flour and cook 2 minutes.
- Remove from heat and set aside.
- When the pressure cooker timer has counted to zero, carefully quick release the steam.
- Remove the tuna and set aside.
- Pour the butter mixture into the pot and press the sauté button.
- Stir until thickened.
- Turn the unit off.
- Stir in the heavy cream.
- Stir in the peas and tuna.
- Cover with crackers, then cheese.
- Place the lid back on with the unit off.
- Remove lid after 5 minutes and serve.
Notes
Pin It:
What is Happy Belly Foodie all about? Keeping it delicious! 
Looks good! I was confused by your directions though until I watched the video. Just an FYI- in your written directions you left out the part about setting the tuna on top of the pasta before cooking.
Hi Sue. Well, whoops-a-daisy! Thanks for catching that. I’ll fix it right away. Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting.
Hi! Thanks for the recipe, I will be trying it tonight. I just noticed that the recipe says to add peas but I don’t see them on the ingredient list.
Thanks!
Hi Mel, you’re absolutely right. Where’s that darn editor of mine?!?! LOL but seriously, it’s one cup of frozen peas or more if you like. I’ll get that fixed right away. Thank you so much for letting me know and thanks for stopping by. Hope you enjoy! <3
Love that this doesn’t use canned soup! If I wanted to use canned tuna, would you add it before cooking or just stir it in at the end? Do you think I need to adjust the water if I’m not using fresh tuna?
Put the tuna in last. Don’t add extra water. ?
I added finely chipped mushrooms and garlic…omg…this is wonderful!!!! Thank you so much😁😄😀
Awesome Renee. You got this chicka! 😉
I was going to tell husband it was tuna noodle soup, but I stirred in more bread crumbs, topped with panko & cheese and baked in the oven and it turned out great!
Could you make this with rice instead of noodles? Any adjustments if so?
We made this last night for the first try. Picked up some more tuna (about a pound or so) and cut it into 4x ‘steaks’ and placed those around the top. Cooked fine, but we thought we had a bit too much broth left over after it was done pressure cooking (we did a quick release).
We ladled out about a cup or more of the broth and it turned out fantastic. Really love the texture and flavor that adding the crushed buttery crackers provides. Wold also recommend removing tuna after pressure cooking and forking it apart on a plate before adding back into the casserole as it will help to distribute it a bit more without having large / uneven chunks from breaking it up with a utensil inside the pot.
Excited to see what this is like as a leftover in a few days too.