IN THE POT | HIDDEN VEGETABLE PASTA SAUCE

I’m constantly on the look out for recipes that will make great lunch options for the toddler and help me ensure I’m getting enough vegetables into his diet (and ours!).  We keep a supply of the toddle ready meals in the cupboard just in case we don’t have anything suitable in the house or we’re out and about; they’ve been really handy to have but I’d really like to save some money and prepare our own versions of them to eat.

I was in the supermarket the other day and I saw they had “kids pasta sauce” available.  It’s in a child portion sized bottle and from what I could tell looks just like the adult version only you pay more for less. As I stood there looking at the bottle it dawned on me – I can make my own kids pasta sauce for way cheaper and I’ll know exactly what’s in it.

So I went home and hit the internet.  I found a couple of good pasta sauce recipes but in the end I decided to make my own up.  I was really surprised at how awesome tasting the sauce was and how much the Little Man just loved it. Total success! (Which is lucky because I made a mountain of it for the freezer!)

Hidden Vegetable Pasta Sauce

1 celery bunch

1 leek

5 carrots

1 red capsicum

1 green capsicum

1 yellow capsicum

1 red onion

1 brown onion

3 zucchini

500g sliced button mushrooms

3 x 800g tinned diced tomatoes

1 tbs olive oil

1 tbs crushed garlic

3 tbs caster sugar

3 tbs balsamic vinegar

1. Chopped and dice celery, leek, capsicums, onions and place into a bowl.

2. Grate the carrots and zucchini.  (I use the food processor for this step – so easy!)

3. Heat the oil in a large fry pan. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook until onion is just getting translucent. (We have a huge Scanpan frypan that allowed me to cook all the vegetables together – if you’re not able to do this, just cook them up in batches)

4. Add in the vegetables.  Cook vegetables for 15 – 20 minutes, stir occasionally.  (You don’t want them burning or sticking to the bottom of the pan.)

5. Once cooked add vegetables, tinned tomatoes, caster sugar and balsamic vinegar to your slow cooker.

6. Cook on low for 6 hours. (Stir occasionally)

7. Serve with your choice of pasta. (I made ours with risoni.)

This makes a lot of pasta sauce (about 6 litres).  I used a stick blender to give ours a bit of a smoother texture before serving it to the Little Man and freezing it.

If you wanted you could skip cooking the vegetables on heat before putting them in the slow cooker and just add it all to the slow cooker from the start. I prefer the taste of having them cooked for a bit first, but that’s just personal preference.  Alternatively you could cook it all in a fry pan – just add the tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and simmer for at least 20 minutes.

You can also just add whatever vegetables you have on hand and that are in season.  That’s the beauty of this recipe it all breaks down in the end and so you could have anything in there and no one would know!

I made up a few single portion sizes and froze these so I can easily use them for lunches over the coming months.  I’ve also frozen some larger portion sizes because I figure I can use this sauce for things like lasagne, adding some mince to it for another pasta based meal or use it as a base for stews and casseroles.