I’m one of those people who get home from whatever long day I had and am not looking forward to cooking then having to clean ALL the pots and pans that came from whatever is what I decided to cook. So a while back, I saw a recipe on the web for one-pot meals. I decided that it would be something that I would look into later, and here we are with this easy one-pot dump pasta dish. Although I’ve made similar dishes with this, it all comes down to pretty much the same stuff.
I usually add protein to this one-pot dump pasta dish, usually ground turkey or ground bison, to keep it a little healthy. Although I love ground beef, the fat content is typically higher than I would like. Therefore, this will only yield a small amount, but you can double the recipe as you see fit to however many mouths you are going to feed.
Easy One-Pot Dump Pasta Dish
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef (minced beef)
- 1 jar Marinara sauce (tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and onions – pasta sauce in southern hemisphere for Italian seafood dish)
- ½ tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup cheddar cheese - Shredded
Instructions
- In a medium pot, add the olive oil and cook the meat all the way. You can drain it if you like; I usually don’t because it adds flavour to the rest of the meal.
- Now dump the pasta and sauce into the pot and mix it, drop the temp until it’s simmering and cover the pot so the pasta can cook all the way through. If you are using spaghetti, I just break it in half, so it fits in the pot.
- Stir occasionally to ensure it doesn’t burn on the bottom; it shouldn’t if it stays at a light simmer.
- This makes the old way of cooling pasta seem bland. By cooking it this way, I feel the pasta tastes better because it absorbs the pasta sauce instead of water from the traditional way!