Pasta Fagioli – Slow Cooker Meal Prep

Please Share This Post!

Pasta Fagioli is a delicious Italian soup that is great for meal prepping. Plus it can be cooked in the slow cooker making dinnertime a breeze. It’s a really hearty soup made with pasta and beans, and a bowl of this soup with some garlic bread is a delicious family meal.

Pasta Fagioli

The first time I learned about this soup was when we were on holiday in Orlando a few years ago. On our last day, we went to Magic Kingdom and had lunch at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant. Liam decided he wanted a bowl of pasta fagioli for his starter. It seemed something so random for him to choose – and I asked if he knew it was a soup, and was he sure he would like it? Turned out he eaten it before, when he went out to an Italian restaurant with his dad.

This soup is a traditional meatless Italian soup with pasta and beans; but in this recipe there is added beef mince. This is because when I made this dish for my family, I had a packet of mince that I needed to use, and was fed up of making the usual spaghetti bolognese! I remembered the pasta fagioli that Liam had on holiday, and decided to try and recreate it at home. I looked online for recipes and found several that use meat, as well as the traditional pasta and beans. So I tweaked what I found from various recipes and my pasta fagioli was born!

I’ve made this several times now, and have tweaked it to our family’s taste preference – something you may want to do when it comes to the dried herbs that are in this recipe. I would also be inclined to describe my version as a stew rather than a soup! But you could always add more stock to soupify it more!

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. If you clicked the link then made a purchase, a small percentage of the sale price would be paid to this me. It doesn’t cost you anything more but it helps keep the lights on over here!

I meal prep this in advance – and keep it stored in the fridge for up to 3 days before cooking in the slow cooker. I brown off the ground beef with onion, and garlic, and allow it to cool before adding it to a large lidded container with canned chopped tomatoes, beef stock, canned beans, and lots of herbs.

On the day that I want us to have pasta fagioli for dinner, the prepped dish is dumped in the slow cooker and cooked on low for 6 hours – after 5 hours I add the dried pasta, and it really is such a deliciously simple meal. I used pasta shells as that is what I happened to have – but any small pasta shape is fine.

To add to the carb fest, I often make a round of homemade garlic bread using a ciabatta loaf. I cut the bread into slices, on the diagonal, and slather with garlic and herb butter – which is just some butter with a couple of crushed garlic cloves, and dried mixed herbs smushed into it. No measurements – I do it by eye. The garlic bread then gets popped into a hot oven for 10-15 minutes or until the bread is toasty and golden, and the garlic butter has melted – delish!

This really is a family favourite – I’ve not made it for a few weeks though, so I’ll have to add it back into rotation again!

Continue to Content

Pasta Fagioli

Yield: 4

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 6 hours

Total Time: 6 hours 20 minutes

Print

Ingredients

• Olive oil
• 500g lean beef mince
• 100g onion, finely chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 100g carrot, grated
• 2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
• 400g can canellinni beans
• 1L beef stock
• 2 tbsps oregano
• 1 tbsps parsley
• 1 tbsps rosemary
• 1 tbsps basil
• 100g small pasta shells (or other small shaped pasta), dry weight

Instructions

1. In a frying pan, brown off the beef mince, onion and garlic in a little olive oil. Set aside to cool.
2. Place all of the other ingredients - except the pasta - into a large container with a lid.
3. Add the cooled beef mince and stir everything through.
4. Store in the fridge for up to 3 days.
5. When ready to cook, place the prepared ingredients into the slow cooker, and cook on low for 6 hours.
6. Add the pasta after 5 hours and stir through.
7. Serve immediately with garlic bread.

Did you make this recipe? Share it!

Tag @_ThePurplePumpkinBlog on Instagram with the hashtag #TPPBRecipes!

Please feel free to share this Pasta Fagioli recipe by using the social buttons on the side or bottom of this post! Don’t forget that you can join The Pumpkin Patch for member exclusive freebies, offers, and more; and follow The Purple Pumpkin Blog posts on Feedly or on Bloglovin’ so that you don’t miss out!

Take a look at our other Easy Soup Recipes next.

Please Share This Post!