Slow Cooker Pasta Sauce with Sausage and Eggplant

75 Days of Summer Slow Cooker Meals EatAtHomeCooks

SausageEggplantPasta2

My husband likes his pasta sauce with meat. I prefer mine to be packed with veggies. This is our compromise.

After hours in the slow cooker, the eggplant becomes melt-in-your-mouth buttery. If you didn’t know it was in there, you might not notice it. It’s a great way to sneak in extra veggies!  For the sausage, I prefer to use pre-cooked sausage because it’s easier to slice up, but any Italian sausage would work for this.

This makes a pretty big batch for the two of us, but it freezes nicely for future use.

Here’s what you’ll need:

SausageEggplantPasta1

Slow Cooker Pasta Sauce with Sausage and Eggplant

Yield: 8

Ingredients

  • 1 (28 oz.) can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 (16 oz.) jar pasta sauce
  • 1 T. Italian seasoning
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 lb. Italian sausage
  • 1 large eggplant

Instructions

  1. In the slow cooker, combine the crushed tomatoes, pasta sauce, Italian seasoning and minced garlic.
  2. Coin slice the sausage. Peel and dice the eggplant. Add both to the slow cooker. Stir well to combine.
  3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
  4. Serve over pasta, topped with parmesan cheese.
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Kate is a home cook living and working in New Jersey. In addition to sharing recipes with Eat at Home readers, she blogs her cooking adventures at Kate’s Recipe Box. When she’s not in the kitchen, you can find her reading or tending to her garden.

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Spaghetti with Kale and Lemon

I used to be strictly a red sauce and spaghetti noodle kinda girl. However, I would like to think my taste buds have matured over the years. (Maybe matured is not the right word, since I still prefer to hide my veggies in other foods so I don’t really taste them.)  However, this dish helped me realize that kale really can taste good! Granted it gets a little help from olive oil, garlic, lemon and my favorite, cheese, but this was really good! It even made me give kale chips another try. I still say they taste like broccoli potato chips, but with some ranch, I’ve even learned to enjoy eat those too.  If you are really a lover of greens, you could try this with collards, like they did in the December 2012 edition of Whole Living magazine, but…I’ll stick with kale!

Spaghetti with Kale and Lemon

Ingredients

  • 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4-1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (depends on the level of heat you prefer)
  • 1/2-1 bunch of kale, stems removed and chopped
  • 1/4 cup walnuts, toasted (or nut/seed of choice, sesame would be good)
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 2 Tbsp lemon juice
  • Sea salt and pepper (to taste)
  • 12 oz spaghetti noodles
  • 1/4-1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan (Asiago or Romano)

Instructions

  1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
  2. Cook garlic and pepper flakes until fragrant, stirring frequently, approx. 30-45 seconds.
  3. Add kale, and stir until slightly wilted.
  4. Remove from heat and stir in walnuts, lemon zest and juice.
  5. Season with salt and pepper.
  6. Meanwhile, cook pasta in well-salted water according to package directions.
  7. Once done, reserve 1/2 cup pasta water and drain.
  8. Add pasta to skillet, tossing to coat.
  9. Add reserved water as needed to reach desired consistency
  10. Sprinkle with cheese before serving.
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My kids wouldn’t eat this since it contained a green vegetable other than lettuce or cucumbers, but I thought this was delicious! Light, yet filling, and healthy. The red pepper gives it a nice little kick too, but the amounts can be adjusted to suit your taste buds.  It comes together quickly, and my kids just eat plain noodles with Parmesan (they don’t care for sauce) while I enjoy my greens like a big girl!

KimM is a contributing writer for Eat at Home. See more from her at her blog Makin’ it Mo’Betta, and follow along on PinterestFacebook and Twitter!

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Ranch Meatballs and Pasta – 15 Minute Meal

We love Hidden Valley Ranch dressing.  So when they asked if I’d like to create a new recipe using it, I jumped at the chance.

This time, I decided to give pasta and meatballs a little Western twist with tomatoes and green chilis and a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix.

This can be made in the time it takes to boil the pasta.  That makes it a 15 minutes meal and you know I love those!

Here’s what you’ll need:   [Read more...]

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Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

This easy slow cooker Chicken Cacciatore is a crowd pleaser!  I created it on a Sunday morning.  It cooked while we were at church and was ready to eat when we got home.

I fully intended to show you a photo of the finished deal.  I took several, but they didn’t turn out at all.  I guess we were so hungry that I snapped too quickly.

This dish is full of chicken, bell peppers and onions in homemade tomato sauce.  Red wine brings more flavor to the sauce, but you can leave this out if you need to.  Serve the chicken and sauce over hot pasta.  I used bow tie pasta, but you can use any shape you like.

Here’s what you’ll need to make Chicken Cacciatore:   [Read more...]

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Healthier Skillet Chicken Parmesan and a chance to win $50,000 Kitchen Makeover

This is our favorite meal that I’ve created recently.  It’s easy.  It’s delicious.  It’s pasta!

And it uses Campbell’s Heart Smart Prego sauce.  Yum!

I’m not always the best at checking sodium levels and other nutrition facts to guard our heart health, so I like products that make it easy.  The Prego Heart Smart Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic sauce is a winner.

This dish tastes fantastic.  Paired with a big, fresh salad, it makes a great heart healthy dinner.

Here’s what you’ll need for the recipe, but keep reading past the recipe to find out how you can enter to win a $50,000 kitchen makeover! [Read more...]

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Garlic Pepper Chicken and Broccoli with Parmesan Pasta (and Sam’s Club Card giveaway!)

Broccoli, chicken and pasta.  Any meal I make with these three favorites is going to be a hit in this house.  Luckily, they’re also key ingredients for quick, weeknight meals.

For this recipe, I wanted to keep the flavors simple, but vibrant.  Black pepper is so common, we sometimes forget that it can stand on it’s own.  I didn’t want this to be too peppery for the kids, so I went a little lighter than if it had just been Jim and I eating.

I also used  Beneforté Naturally Better Broccoli.  I had the opportunity to try this veggie a few weeks ago, when I paired it in a salad with quinoa.

Beneforté broccoli is an improved nutrition broccoli.  It’s a result of cross-pollination of commercial broccoli with a wild variety found in Italy. The taste is the same, but each serving contains 2-3 times more of the plant nutrient glucoraphanin compared to other broccoli varieties. Glucoraphanin boosts the body’s antioxidant enzyme levels and these enzymes in Beneforté help maintain the antioxidant activity of vitamins A, C and E.

It’s also really clean and fresh, right out of the bag.  That makes it perfect for munching and quick to add to a recipe.

Here’s what you’ll need to make Garlic Pepper Chicken and Broccoli with Parmesan Pasta.  (Keep reading to enter the giveaway!)   [Read more...]

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Swiss Macaroni and Cheese with Smoked Sausage

Need a little weeknight comfort food?  This one’s for you then.

This recipe came about when I looked up from my computer and realized it was already 5:30 and I hadn’t started dinner.  (And no, the irony that I’m a food blogger and still have this problem is not lost on me.)

I had a smoked sausage in the fridge and a daughter begging for mac & cheese.  But I didn’t want to make the usual kind.  A rummage through the cheese drawer yielded a block of Swiss and a new recipe came into being.

Here’s what you’ll need:  [Read more...]

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Sweet Italian Sausage Pasta Sauce in the Slow Cooker

This hearty pasta sauce is full of flavor.  Slices of sweet Italian sausage links, combine with bell peppers, onions and garlic in thick tomato sauce.

I like for most slow cooker recipes to not need any kind of browning or cooking on the stove, but this one does require some pre-cooking.  Thankfully, it only takes a few minutes to get everything into the crockpot.  I made this on a Sunday morning before church.  The hands-on prep only took about 15 minutes.

You could also continue cooking it on the stove, but I like the convenience of the crockpot.  No need to stir or tend the pot and you can leave the house while it’s cooking.

Here’s what you’ll need:  [Read more...]

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Roasted Garlic, Brown Butter and Parmesan Pasta (in 15 Minutes)

You know how I love a 15 minute meal.  Sometimes that’s all I have to pull dinner together.  Such was the case the night I made this, but the inspiration for the dish had come a few months before.

When I went to Nashville for Blissdom, a group of us had dinner together the first night.  Tricia from Once a Month Mom was our ring leader and she took us downtown to Demo’s Restaurant.  I chose the spaghetti with brown butter garlic sauce.  It tasted really good, but I had an inkling that I could make it better at home.

I was right!  And it can be made in the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta.  Here’s what you’ll need:  [Read more...]

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Roasted Red Pepper and Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta with Chicken

My family loves creamy pasta dishes.  They’re so quick and easy to make that we can have this favorite meal on a busy week night or cooked up after church on a Sunday.

This version has roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and chicken marinated in red wine vinegar and homemade Italian Herb Salt.  Serve it up with a salad and a loaf of crusty bread with seasoned olive oil for dipping.  Even better than going out to eat and much cheaper too!   [Read more...]

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