Rx: Crockpot Tuesday ~Pasta Fagioli /fah-JOE-lee/

You can’t go wrong with crockpot recipes, but you can absolutely butcher the pronunciation if you’re not careful. Contrary to what you might guess, this dish is NOT /fah-GEE-OH-lee/, instead, it’s /fah-JOE-lee/.

Back to the more important point about how you can’t go wrong with crockpot recipes … They provide the perfect opportunity to use what you have in your pantry and not sweat it if you can’t follow the recipe to a tee.

Vicki-ism: If you’ve got it, use it; if you don’t, substitute.

You may have had pasta fagioli at your favorite Italian restaurant, and it may or may not have looked like mine. The kids loved this! In fact, when I got up the next morning, I found evidence in the sink that one of them enjoyed a “second supper” sometime during the night.

Here’s what you “need” to make pasta fagioli:

2 pounds of ground beef – browned

1 onion – chopped

3 carrots or a couple big handfuls of baby carrots  – chopped

4 stalks of celery – chopped

I used 2 cans of light red kidney beans, but you can use nearly any beans you choose  – white, light red, dark, cannellini, great northern … whatever is in the pantry!

32 ounce box of beef broth

23.5 ounce jar of Italian Sausage/Garlic Spaghetti sauce (I used Prego)

2 (28 ounce) cans of diced tomatoes (mine were smaller than this)

small palm-full of oregano (3-4 tsp)

smaller palm-full of pepper (about 2 tsp)

I cooked this on high for 4-5 hours. Then I added 1 pound of pasta for the last 30 minutes. I used ____, but any small pasta will work. Using this much pasta resulted in very little liquid, so it wasn’t very soup-like, which my kids were just fine with. If you want it more like soup, then add less pasta or additional broth and/diced tomatoes.

Kadi brought home some French bread, which was a perfect companion with our pasta fagioli.  Delizioso!