Italian Night

About author / Christine Gable

Culinary enthusiast; kids cuisine and slow cooking; magazine recipe developer; professional writer. Her simple recipes are great for family dinners.

Who doesn’t love Italian food? It is certainly one of the most favored cuisines worldwide, with Italian restaurants and pizza shops in every city. And we all know those classic Italian foods: tomatoes, potatoes, pasta, cheese, oregano, and basil. Just that listing is enough to make the mouth water.

In the interest of getting dinner on the table most nights, I recently wrote about my plan to try out International Cuisines night. My idea was to try a new and different international twist on a regular everyday food that I may otherwise just drop in the crockpot and forget.

Second week’s plan: Italian.

Hmmm, what to make this week? (Last week it was Mexican fare.) My hunt for an Italian slow cooker meal began. It seems like so many Italian foods are time-intensive (sorry, Giada!). Yes, they’re delicious, but why can’t they be quicker and easier to prepare?! For it’s the quick and easy meals that are the ones that I come back to time and again. They’re the ones that we rely upon in the busy course of a week to keep us going from work to school to the endless list-of-activities-and-classes.

You may remember when I figured out how to make slow cooker lasagna—and that sure is delish, but it’s not one that I can rely upon when I’m on a time deadline. Sauce and noodles and ricotta cheese—even in the slow cooker—that has to wait until I’m not in a rush. Especially with a time crunch (and helping kids get breakfasts and lunches packed) in the wee morning hours.

Nope. I definitely want to eat Italian as much as possible in a week’s time, but it’s gotta be quicker and less time-intensive.

Spaghetti sauce. There’s another winner in the crockpot. If you, like me, find yourself with only a few cans of crushed tomatoes in the cupboard (of course, that ready-to-go sauce gets used up first, eh?!) when you want to serve spaghetti, then using the slow-simmering qualities of the crockpot is ideal to create a richly herb-seasoned mix that will have everyone’s mouth watering when they land at the end of the day. In this case, it’s pretty easy too: just boil a pot of pasta and dinner is served (meatballs and parmesan optional).

Now, I have seen the occasional slow cooker recipe that does include the pasta with the sauce, right in the crockpot. Hmm, my recipe developer’s brain is wondering how this combo really works out … does the pasta get overcooked and pasty? … or does it really taste good? Have any of you tried this with success? Please leave a comment and let me know. I’m thinking it could work with less than 6 hours of cook time and it would probably require more water in the tomato sauce so that the pasta would have enough liquid to cook well. There’s another Italian slow cooker experiment for another day, eh?

That’s when the best fast-and-easy idea of all hit me: I spotted that large bottle of zesty Italian salad dressing in the cupboard. What about trying that as a flavorful addition to regular ol' pot roast? It’s got the Italian twist without too much time-intensive work.

It worked!

Here’s a divinely simple and easy recipe that’s guaranteed to make the house smell wonderful. Place all 3 ingredients in the cooker before you head off to work and arrive home to an Italian home-style dinner with meat that is fork-tender and ‘falling apart.’ Pull a bag of salad out of the fridge and dinner is served!

Serves/Makes: 6

• 4 pounds boneless chuck roast
• 1/2 cup Italian salad dressing
• 10 small (1 1/2 to 2-inch size) potatoes