Quick tubini in tomato sauce and meatballs

I wanted something hot & quick for dinner tonight since I can only eat mac & cheese 3 days in a row. Plus I wanted to use up the 6 meatballs from GFS that have been developing a heavy case of freezer burn. So here is my under 30 minute meal, made with garbage from around the house. Since I didn’t want to go to the grocery for anything (with a faint whisper from Macaulay Culkin………he’s cooking up garbage.)

The Recipe (serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as an appetizer)
8 oz. Pasta (half a box)
6 frozen Italian meatballs
15 oz can tomato sauce
4 oz can sliced mushrooms, drained
4 cloves garlic
pinch red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
2 bay leaves
1-2 Tb olive oil

It’s pretty straightforward to make this recipe. You’ll need two pots, one for the sauce and another for cooking the pasta. While the pasta water is coming to a boil, lets make some quick tomato sauce. Heat the sauce pot to medium, add the olive oil and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes to soften, then add the red flakes until fragrant. Now add the mushrooms and stir for a couple more minutes. Now that the base is done, add the rest of the spices and the canned tomato sauce. Bring it all to a simmer, and let the whole mess cook for at least 15 minutes, while you cook up the pasta.

For the pasta, I had a box of Barilla tubini pasta in the basement. I only used half the box for this recipe for two reasons. 1) I live alone, so I try to keep leftovers to the bare minimum & 2) This recipe is basically a half sized recipe due to the 15 oz. can of tomato sauce. If I had followed a normal pasta/tomato sauce recipe, the rule of thumb seems to be 28oz. can of tomatoes (whole or crushed) to one pound of pasta.

The meatballs are a cooking after thought in the making of this recipe. Just reheat the meatballs in the microwave so that they are heating though. Then toss them into the sauce at the last second to coat. If would heat the meatballs in the sauce, like most people normally would do. You probably wouldn’t be able to get all of this made in 30 minutes. Remember to embrace technology; it’s your friend.

Now if I just had an induction cook top, well I could have made this recipe even quicker. And it would probably cut my homebrewing times in half, since a big chuck of time is wasted heating up water. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Now dig in. If I made this recipe any easier you would think that I lifted it from Sandra Lee.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>