First, let me say that this recipe is not a quick way to put dinner on the table, but in terms of actual time you have to do any actual thing, it will only involve your human labor for about 10 minutes. Meets my patient-yet-lazy standards.

Ingredients/Shopping List

• 1 TBSP cooking oil
• 1 onion
• 1 TBSP chili powder
• 1 TBSP unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 3 cups vegetable broth [substitute 3 cups water + 3 cubes bullion]
• 1 can tomato sauce, aim for an 8 oz can but a 15 oz can may be used as this recipe is forgiving
• 1 cup dry lentils, rinsed
• 1 TBSP apple cider vinegar
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• a box/package of pasta of your choice
• water for pasta making, varies

Materials

• Instant Pot
• onion dicer
• strainer or collander
• measuring spoons
• stirring paddle
• kitchen timer

Method the Pasta

I'm going to start off by saying that if your pasta isn't made of wheat (say it is lentil pasta or rice noodles or some other wheat-avoidant pasta), this method may not work perfectly so you might want to skip this step and make your pasta the way you've always made it on the stove. Or take a chance. Or google how to cook your specific pasta type in the Instant Pot and follow those directions. But if you have boring old run of the mill regular wheat pasta, read on because I've got you!

This step requires a bit of math because I don't know what of the myriad of pasta shapes and styles you decided to grab. Was it a 16 oz package of elbows? Was it an 8 oz package of spaghetti? Who knows and who cares! You just have to be able to do ratios. Ratios are easy. They are an if-this-then-that.

1. Open up that big old Instant Pot and toss in your pasta (1 package), taking care to retain the package the pasta came in. The package has information you need on it.
2. To this pasta in the inner pot, you are then going to add 2 cups of water for every 4 oz listed in the net weight on the pasta package. Mind boggled? Here are some easy already figured out amounts for you (and feel free to drop me an email if your amount of pasta wasn't on the list because I'll add it!):
   
   4 oz ====> 2 cups water
   8 oz ====> 4 cups water
   12 oz ===> 6 cups water
   16 oz/1 lb > 8 cups water
   
   
3. Still with me so far? Good! So your pasta and water are in the instant pot. Now you are going to once again look at the pasta package and go find the cooking directions. On there it should tell you to cook pasta for some low number-to-some higher number of minutes. We are only interested in the "some low number".
   
   Take that number and divide it by half, rounding down. This new number is important so remember it.
   
   Examples. 7 minutes on the package divided by half becomes 3.5 minutes which rounds down to 3 minutes. 3 minutes on the package divided by half becomes 1.5 minutes which rounds down to 1 minute. You get the point. If you struggle with this, send me an email and I'll help you out!
   
   
4. Toss the lid on, set the VENT to seal, and set the pasta to PRESSURE COOK at LOW pressure for that new time value you just figured out. And away the Instant Pot goes, doing its thing!

Method the Cincinnati Chili

1. While you are waiting, it is the perfect time to dice your onion (1). Set aside a TBSP or two of onion dicings as a garnish if you want. I'm too lazy to garnish, but I respect you if you aren't. Also, measure out your spices so they are all ready to toss in to the pot in one fell swoop in the next step.
2. Once the time is up, QUICK RELEASE your pasta. The pasta may not have absorbed all of the water, and that is okay. Dump it into a strainer and set it aside, we are going to need that inner pot for the rest of this, anyway.
   
   It may just be quicker for you to cook the pasta the old fashioned stove top way if you can multitask while also making the rest of the dish.
   
   
3. Return your newly emptied inner pot to your Instant Pot. Add your oil (1 TBSP) to the pot and press the "sauté" button, and leave the lid off. Wait until the display says HOT.
4. Add the onion (1, diced) and stir it about for about 3 minutes.
5. At the end of the 3 minutes, add your chili powder (1 TBSP), unsweetened cocoa powder (1 TBSP), ground cumin (1 tsp), ground cinnamon (1 tsp), paprika (1 tsp), ground allspice (1/4 tsp), and ground cloves (1/4 tsp). Now stir for an additional minute to toast the spices and get that onion all sloppy with 'em.
6. After the minute is up, press the CANCEL button.
7. To the now off Instant Pot, add, in this exact order to prevent the dreaded BURN message, the broth (3 cups), lentils (1 cup), vinegar (1 TBSP), and finish with the tomato sauce (1 can) on top. DO NOT STIR. Stirring moves the tomato sauce off of the top and invites the BURN message into your life. You don't want that. We don't need that. No one is here for that.
8. Now lock on your lid and place the vent into the sealed position.
9. Press the PRESSURE COOK button and make sure to turn the pressure back to HIGH (remember, we used low before, so we need to fix that) with a time of 9 minutes.
10. We are now going to do a combination release, which means that you are going to go ahead and set yourself a kitchen timer for 5 minutes to let it natural release for that amount of time.
11. Once the kitchen timer has gone off, Quick Release the rest of the way!
12. Now grab a bowl and serve yourself some room temperature pasta out of your strainer we set aside beach in step one, and ladle yourself a whole heap-load ladle of Cincinnati Chili on top of that pasta. Maybe two ladle fulls. Or three.
13. If you weren't me and actually had the self restraint to save yourself some onion dicings to garnish with, this would be the point where you'd sprinkle them on top of your bowl of yum.
14. Then, because you have restraint, you'd also hold off on eating long enough to photograph your creation. And if you do, please send me the photo because I want to celebrate you!
15. Now go eat. You've earned it!

Bibliography. Green Plate Club. Green Plate Club is a new meal planning service offering vegan and vegetarian plans. This is one of their recipes, which I converted over for the Instant Pot. Once you get familiar with the Instant Pot it will be easy for you to convert recipes, too. This recipe was published on Connoisseurus Veg, should you have a desire to cook this but no Instant Pot at present.

To help you convert the recipe to the Instant Pot, I present this tutorial for how to figure out the cooking of pasta in the instant pot, and this tutorial for how to cook lentils in the instant pot.