I found this wonderful little recipe this morning whilst perusing my Facebook feed. It looked so simple to make, and I had all the ingredients, so I just had to try. Good day for it too, since I'm sick. :(
All I can say is ... YUMMO! We devoured the entire crockpot full of tomato-y goodness in short order. Since I feel like I can give it a ringing endorsement, I thought I'd share it here!
The original recipe can be found on the Family Fresh Meals website. I failed to take pictures, so this is tragically all text! I'm not going to re-invent the wheel here, so I'll just share the changes I made to fit it into our family's typical food pantry items. She didn't indicate crockpot size in the recipe, but I used a 6 1/2 quart crockpot, and it was a touch over half-full at the end. Probably not the most efficient size for this recipe.
She calls for a pound of ground beef, uncooked. Instead, I used a pound of ground chicken, and I browned it in a skilled with 2 tsp dried minced onion plus 1 tsp dried minced garlic. I don't like to toss uncooked ground meat in a crockpot. Just a quirk. Just me. YMMV
My husband declared that I'd used too much onion just using the old sniff test, so I will reduce that next time. I "made his eyes water", lol! Oddly enough, I didn't notice the onion, but hey -- he's the guy I please so the onion will get the ax on the next go. :D
Since we don't buy V8, I replaced the cup called for in the recipe with 1/2 cup water plus 1/2 cup tomato sauce following extensive research on the internet (lol, extensive -- I nabbed the first substitute recipe I ran across. :P). I'm not sure what the V8 would have added for flavor and sodium, but we really didn't miss it.
For beef broth, I brought three cups of water to a boil in the skillet where I'd cooked the chicken so I could get the yummy bits off the bottom of the skillet. I added beef bouillon granules to the boiling water and stirred until dissolved. I then poured that into the crockpot with everything else. At the end, the recipe "seemed" a touch too salty, so I may cut this back to 2 tsp of granules next time or find a homemade beef bouillon granules recipe.
It cooked from 11:30 am to 6:30 pm and smelled wonderful. It really did smell like lasagna. The pasta was perfectly done at the 30 minute mark as well. It's not soupy-soup. It's more like hearty-soup. We had rolls and green beans on the side. Perfection! Would be great too when it's cold outside, maybe even better then!
It is definitely a keeper! I've already added it to my Mastercook program. So, using the changes I made, here are the nutrition numbers from Mastercook. I'm not sure how Mastercook handles some of the ingredients, and my copy of the software is older than the dinosaurs, so these would be guidelines. In other words, take 'em with a grain of salt! But not too much salt... it's not good for you. :P
Servings: 6
Calories: 332
Total fat: 8g (Saturated fat: 2g)
Sodium: 480mg
Protein: 29g
Enjoy!
