Hearty Spaghetti

My husband can Eat. I must admit I eat almost as much as he does. Neither of us snack and dinner is an important time to come together for us so I try to make flavor and protein-packed meals we both enjoy.

Spaghetti is one of those super simple recipes that’s easy to get loads of veggies in without anyone realizing. (I’ve also been making a variety of chicken soups—a basic version, a Mediterranean-style, and my most recent fav: Italian lentil, which I’ll share later!) This is a staple recipe I make once a week and we haven’t gotten tired of it yet.

Liv’s Spaghetti with Meat & Veg Sauce

Ingredients:

• XL jar of Rao’s red pasta sauce (whichever kind you prefer, I get Rao’s marinara from Costco)

• 1.5lbs organic ground beef

• 1 medium onion chopped

• 5-6 cloves garlic minced

• 6-10 mushrooms (I had some pretty big baby bellas and always add a lot), cut in half and sliced

• 2-3 zucchinis or yellow squash

• 1 red bell pepper diced

• 6-8 carrots (you’ll dice these to roast in the oven or blitz in the food processor to avoid that step)

• Optional veggies additions: cauli or broccoli (roast or chop in food processor/blender to easily mix in)

• Optional flavor adds: red chili flakes, parm or motz at the end (or I sometimes use soft goat cheese)

Directionals:

• Heat oven to 400-415F if roasting carrots or other veggies.

• Do all your chopping and dicing (sometimes I start during the day and just do a few as I have time—like this morning I peeled and chopped the carrots and just put in a covered bowl in the fridge til ready to throw in the oven after work).

• Warm a sploosh of avocado or olive oil in an extra large pan over medium heat (sploosh fully coats bottom of pan). I cook in a massive cast iron—it adds iron into the food, it’s non-toxic, and holds a consistent temp).

• Add onions and garlic to heated pan. Now you can get fancy and caramelize your onion or just saute for a few minutes along with the garlic. (Alternatively for deeper flavor you could roast a head of garlic —simply cut top off a head of garlic, place in tinfoil, drizzle olive oil on, wrap it up and roast for 30-45min at 400F).

• Toss any veg you’re roasting in avocado or other high-heat oil with S & P and garlic powder, spread evenly on baking sheet (set timer for 20 minutes to check. Carrots take 40min to golden and start to caramelize in my oven).

• Now that your onion and garlic have had a chance to mingle and get aromatic, throw in the mushrooms. Sometimes I add a healthy pat of grass-fed butter because I love the smell and taste…not necessary but yum! Let them soften up a bit—3-5min, giving a couple good stirs (love my stainless steel spatula for the cast iron, scrapes all the bits up).

• Add bell pepper and saute a few more mintutes.

• Now this might freak some people out but at this point I scrape my veggies to the sides of the pan and add the ground beef. You could brown it in a separate pan. But I cook it with the veggies (adding S & P) until it’s mostly cooked and every so slightly pink. Then I add the pasta sauce, because I don’t want to overcook the meat.

• Now you let everything simmer together with a lid on for as long as it takes for the veggies in the oven to finish roasting—about 20min. I like to stir in the zucchini in the last five minutes so they don’t mush (stir carefully, at this point my pan is usually quite full).

• When you’re ready to serve, boil water for whatever kind of pasta you prefer. I used to have access to handmade pasta that was made with organic Italian flour and duck eggs, delicious and super high in protein. My husband and I have taken this dish camping for our first evening’s meal, worth the weight to carry it up the mountain and delicious cold (at least we think so)! It’s actually super easy to pack and clean up. But anyways, use whatever pasta you like!

• Plate (or bowl!) your dish—pasta first, a generous helping of your meat/veg sauce, add any veggies you roasted and whatever fun stuff you’d like on top (black garlic, cheese, extra chili flakes or fresh basil is a treat).

• Leftovers: YAY. If you eat as much as we do, it will easily provide two adults 3-4 meals. It freezes really well (:

• NOTE: to change it up you could use quinoa or brown rice (also budget friendly, makes it stretch further). You could easily sub Italian sausage or some ground pork for the beef!

Enjoy!

I don’t have a picture of the spaghetti but we ate it right here!