How to make a one-pot pasta dinner

Pasta can be an easy meal to prepare if you want to stick with the basics. After cooking, it's easy enough to throw some canned marinara over it all, sprinkle with parmesan, and call it a day. Most of us veer away from more complicated recipes, as they often involve several utensils, and a bunch of pots and pans. Donal Skehan observed this and decided to do something about it, as you'll see in his video recipe at the bottom of the page (scroll down to see the video below!). He starts with a Martha Stewart recipe, but with a few tweaks, he finishes with a creation all its own.

As with most complex recipes, this one calls for a little chopping. Unlike most complex recipe, it only calls for one pan. This dish will be ready before the kids have the chance to ask when dinner is. And best of all, cleanup will be a breeze. MarthaStewart.com writes that "All you need equipment-wise for this pasta dinner is a small paring knife, a straight-sided skillet, and a pair of tongs (much easier than a spoon for tossing the pasta to coat in sauce)." It's easy to imagine how simple the cleanup process will be with this strategy.
 

Donald makes Stewart's recipe his own by adding spinach. Outside of that, and a bit of fiddling with the ratios used in the recipe from MarthStewart.com, the recipes are nearly identical. Donald also uses about 25% less garlic than the recipe he's been inspired by. 

Additionally, while Donald's recipe calls for 600 ml of water, Stewart's uses a bit more (12 ounces) — this isn't a creative choice, rather, both recipes are making different amounts of pasta. Donald's recipe is cooking up 200 grams of spaghetti, while Stewart's recipe cooks up 4 1/2 cups, which is a bit more than two hundred grams. 

The other ingredients in the recipe include spaghetti or linguini, cherry of grape tomatoes, fresh basil sprigs, thinly sliced onions, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and as previously mentioned, spinach and garlic. You'll want some pecorino cheese to grate over the finished product as a final touch! 

If you thought the prep for this dish was easy, you'll be even more pleased when you hear that the cooking time doesn't vary from what you'd expect the pasta to take on its own. In other words, it's about nine minutes before your dish is "al dente."

Have you ever tried a one-pan pasta recipe before? Let us know your tips and secrets in the comments, and when you're done, be sure to share this recipe with your friends. They might like it even more than you did!