Just last week one of my Facebook friends (sorry, can’t remember who) posted an article about how you don’t need to cook pasta in a big pot of boiling water but instead can pretty much cook it in a pot with the sauce, no matter how minimal. Many people commented that wanted to try it and others, especially those from Italy, scoffed at the procedure. I was curious but didn’t give it another thought.
Not until yesterday (or was it just this morning), when Cooking Light posted a link to this recipe on their Facebook page which claimed to do just that, cook the sauce and pasta all in one pot. Craving a bit of pasta this evening and having most of the ingredients on hand, I decided to give it a go.
Ingredients
- 2t olive oil
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained (the original recipe called petit diced, unsalted, but I didn’t have this on hand, so I used regular)
- 1 14.5 oz can fat free, reduced sodium chicken broth (original recipe called for unsalted stock, but didn’t have that either)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 8 ounces whole-wheat spaghetti
- 10 ounce fresh spinach
- 1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated (about 1/4 cup) – I gave barely a sprinkle (not even a gram as seen on the picture below) to keep it simply filling
Directions
Heat oil in a stock pot over medium-high heat. Saute the onion and garlic for a few minutes until the onion starts to brown. Now, the Cooking Light recipe was very specific about this next step: add the tomatoes, broth, oregano and spaghetti in that order. Stir the pasta until it’s submerged.
Note: Let’s break here for a moment for me to tell you, if you’re using spaghetti as opposed to some other short pasta, make my husband cringe, and break your spaghetti in half before you add it to the pot. The reason? No amount of stirring is going to get that pasta soft enough to submerge it. So, like me, you will end up breaking the pasta in the pot with the back of your wooden spoon, sending it flying for the dog to chase and chomp upon or leaving it scattered across your stove like an abandoned game of pick-up sticks. Now back to the recipe.
Unbroken Pasta
Once the pasta is submerged (or as close as you may get), cover the pot, reduce the flame to medium-low and let it simmer for 7 minutes (or until pasta is almost done). Lift the lid, and adding the spinach in bunches, stir each bunch in until it wilts (this took me about 6 bunches, and I didn’t have 10oz of spinach but only about 8 on hand). Remove the pot from the flame and let sit for 5 minutes.
If you’re not following Simply Filling, feel free to sprinkle a bit of that cheese upon it and enjoy!
One Pot Pasta with Spinach and Tomatoes
Other than the breaking pasta fiasco, this was incredibly easy and quite tasty. Next time, I may cook a bit of shrimp first in the pot to add to the pasta and perhaps some chili flakes too!