Recipe: One-Hour Cheesy Spinach Slow Cooker Tortellini

While the details might vary, the dinnertime scramble is real. You need to pick the kids up from piano lessons and basketball practice, there are errands to run after work, you want to squeeze in an evening yoga class — all while finding a way to get dinner on the table at a reasonable time and with as little effort as possible.

The solution? Fast recipes in your slow cooker. Grab a few packs of tortellini, a jar of sauce, a bag of shredded cheese, and a clamshell of greens, and then let the slow cooker do all the heavy lifting to get a comforting dinner on the table. When it’s all said and done, you’ll have spent less than five minutes in the kitchen, and kept the dirty dishes to a serious minimum.

While pasta in the slow cooker takes more time than on the stovetop, this version is totally hands-off, and dirties just one piece of cookware instead of three. To keep it easy and maximize flavor at the same time, you’ll cook the tortellini directly in the sauce. The pasta soaks up all that aromatic richness from the sauce, and also lends its starchy goodness for a thicker sauce that expertly coats all the nooks and crannies of the tortellini.