ALL ABOUT: Cooking Pasta in the Slow Cooker
Cooking pasta right in the sauce in the slow cooker is an easy way to get a great-tasting dinner on the table—if you can avoid the common pitfalls of mushy, flabby pasta and dull, washed-out sauces. After lots of trial and error, we came up with foolproof recipes that turned out both well-cooked (not overcooked) pastas and full-flavored sauces from the slow cooker, for complete dinners that didn’t require the use of the stovetop or dragging out an extra pot. While not every pasta dish follows the same hard-and-fast rules, there are a few general guidelines we discovered that will guarantee perfect pasta, plus a flavorful sauce, from the slow cooker every time.
Shape Matters
We find that tubular pasta, like penne and ziti, and small pasta, such as macaroni and small shells, work the best in the slow cooker—they are easy to combine with the other ingredients, maintain their shape, and consistently cook to the proper doneness. Do not use strand pasta, such as spaghetti or linguine, because the strands clump together into a sticky mess when cooked.
Toast the Pasta in the Microwave
The main structural elements of pasta are starch and protein. When pasta is cooked in boiling water, the moisture causes the starch to swell up; simultaneously, the heat causes the protein to set, constraining the expansion of the starch and resulting in pasta with the proper texture. In the slow cooker, however, the liquid heats up slowly, so the starch has more time to swell before being checked by the protein, resulting in soggy, mushy pasta. Toasting our raw pasta with oil in the microwave before adding it to the slow cooker helped to set the protein and prevented the pasta from becoming bloated. We found that microwaving the pasta at 50 percent power, and stirring it occasionally, gently toasted the pasta; note that only a portion will look toasted and blistered. However, if you have a weaker microwave you may need to toast your pasta for a longer period than we’ve specified in the recipe. Also, if your microwave does not have a power level button, you can toast the pasta on high power for half the amount of time given in the recipe, stirring the pasta more frequently.
Make a Foil Collar
Most slow cookers have a hotter side (typically the back side, opposite the side with the controls) that can cause pastas and other dense dishes, such as casseroles, to burn. To solve this problem, we line the slow-cooker insert with an aluminum foil collar. To make an aluminum foil collar, fold sheets of heavy-duty foil until you have a six-layered foil rectangle that measures roughly 16 inches long by 4 inches wide for a large slow cooker or 12 by 4 inches for a small slow cooker. (depending on the width of the foil, you will need either two or three sheets of foil.) then press the collar into the back side of the slow-cooker insert; the food will help hold the collar in place during cooking, and the collar will prevent the food from cooking unevenly.
Start with Cooked Sauces
For pasta dinners that were full-flavored but not heavy on prep, we started with supermarket staples, like jarred marinara and alfredo sauces. These convenience products provided a flavor-packed foundation with depth and complexity. Because these sauces are already cooked, we could stir some in at the end of cooking to help brighten the flavors of our dishes and add freshness; when we tried this with uncooked tomato or cream sauces, the flavor was harsh-tasting and one-dimensional.
Cook on High
None of our pasta dishes could withstand an all-day stay on the low setting—they ended up mushy and bland. Cooking the pasta on high for a shorter period of time (our recipes take anywhere from 1½ hours to 4 hours) ensured properly cooked, richly flavored pasta.