Today, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, chicken parmesan, and other Italian favorites seem just as at home on the American table as meatloaf and apple pie. But the popularity of Italian cuisine in the United States actually took many years to build. It began, of course, with Italian immigrants. Between 1890 and 1920, about 4 million Italian-born immigrants (almost one-quarter of all American immigrants) came to the States. World War I gave Italian food its first mainstream push, as newspapers and magazine articles at that time referred to Italian cuisine as “the food of our allies.” Unfortunately, many pasta recipes of the day called for boiling pasta for 30 minutes until it was practically mush. But with Prohibition in the 1920s came speakeasies, many of which were run by Italians (or Sicilians) who knew what they were doing in the kitchen, and thus diners developed a taste for a properly cooked plate of pasta. Pasta with tomato sauce, an inexpensive meal, also fit right in on the American table during the tough times of the Depression. Later, American GIs returning from Italy post–World War II brought a love of Italian food back with them. And by this time Hollywood had jumped on the Italian food bandwagon—who can forget the charming spaghetti-eating scene in 1955’s Lady and the Tramp—forever cementing the popularity of Italian food in American culture. In this chapter, we include several Italian favorites, including slow-cooker versions of meatballs and marinara and Sunday gravy along with easier and quicker approaches to lasagna, manicotti, and chicken Parmesan.