Ingredients
1 lb Ground Pork
1 Jar Tomato Vegetable Pasta Sauce
1 Crown Broccoli
8-10 Baby Tomatoes
¼ Red Onion
1 Tsp Kosher Salt
1 Tbsp Rosemary
1 Bag Black Bean Spaghetti Noodles
Optional sauce ingredients: 2 tbsp Sundried Tomato Pesto, 5 jarred Sundried Tomatoes
Instructions
Total Cook and Prep Time: Slow Cooking Prep (15 minutes), Slow Cooking (4 hours high, or 8 hours low), Prep Time Once Sauce is done: 5 minutes. So allocate 15 minutes before work to prep your slow cooker sauce, and once you’re home you just need to cook up the pasta!
Makes Appx: 6 Servings (if you cook the whole bag of pasta, I like to cook just enough pasta for a meal or two, and then you can freeze the excess slow cooker sauce).
Place 1 LB of ground pork (or beef/turkey/alternative plant-based “meat”) in the slow cooker and sprinkle with kosher salt and rosemary.
Chop up the broccoli head into florets, cut the baby tomatoes in half, and dice the onion - add all the veggies into the slow cooker.
Add the sauce to the slow cooker (I used a mostly “veggie” based tomato sauce with low sugar - to go even lighter just use a few jars of jarred bruschetta).
Optional: add sundried tomato pesto and sundried tomatoes to switch up the flavour.
Mix the contents of the slow cooker to ensure veggies and meat are covered with sauce, plug in, and set to low or high depending on your timeline (4 hours high, 8 hours low). Let those flavours mingle!
Once you’re ready to eat and you’re slow cooker as finished cooking, bring 3-4 cups of water to a boil (depending on how many servings of pasta you wish to make), and add desired amount of pasta. Typically black bean pasta doesn’t require a long cook time - 2-4 minutes - be sure to read the instructions on the specific brand of noodle you’re using.
Once the noodles are cooked, strain the water and place desired amount of pasta in a bowl and top with a heaping scoop of the slow cooker pasta sauce. Top the dish with shaved parmesan, salt, and pepper!
Note: Once the slow cooker sauce is complete, use as much as desired, and then you can freeze the remaining sauce to thaw, heat, and eat at a later date. If you plan on using within the week just refrigerate it.
