What’s great about this recipe?

The simplicity is indescribable.  What’s not to love about dumping everything in the crockpot and coming back hours later to a delicious dinner?  I personally don’t have time to brown meat and cook veggies in the mornings before work.  I also work longer than 5 hours.  An easy answer to this is to cook up the stuff the night before and cook it longer than the suggested 5 (ish) hours.  Another option is to make it on the weekend in between vegging on the couch sessions or errand running or whatever else you like to do with your freedom from work time.  I’ve never really worried if stuff was in the crockpot longer than a recipe told me to cook it.

Brown the meat.

Let’s be real, I don’t think I need to go into great detail on how to brown the meat.  I’ve heard many people like to use 2 different kinds of meat in their pasta dishes, but I prefer to use more veggies.  And sometimes I substitute tomato-ey ingredients with V8 to give the family more vegetable stuff.  But anyway, just drop the meat in a pan and start browning, breaking it up with a wooden spoon or a meat chopper tool.  When it’s brown, it goes in the crockpot.  easy peasy.

Cook the veggies.

I like to use the meat pan to cook the veggies.  But you can totally dirty a second pan and cook them at the same time.  You do it however you prefer to do it.  I mean, I have a dishwasher, so it’s not like I never use more than one pan.  I’m not judging over here.  In addition, if you are using a big enough pan, you can just add the veggies in with the meat.  It’s all getting mixed eventually anyway.

Layers of Crockpot deliciousness.

The stuff all sort of goes into the pot in layers like lasagna or something but you can totally mix it together, rather than stick to rigid layers.  The first time I made this, the noodles all stayed up top with the cheese and got all stuck together.  It was a little annoying for me, but my husband loved it, so I wouldn’t get too stressed over it either way.

Tools you might need:

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