Can you cook pasta in a slow cooker?

This was one of my first questions, and I quickly discovered that most recipes require you to cook the pasta part of a dish separately, as an accompaniment to a main dish.

Why? Well, as you'll know from cooking pasta in a saucepan, it can go mushy if it's cooked for too long. That's why it's typically added towards the end of the cooking process in dishes like casseroles, soups, or sauces, to avoid creating a glutinous mess.

Minestrone soup is a good example of a dish which normally contains pasta, but the pasta is often left out in slow cooker versions. When I checked the ingredients in Swan's 'Slow Cook' recipe book, for example, their minestrone soup recipe didn't contain any pasta at all.

Headlines

• You can cook pasta in a slow cooker, but it's important to do it by adding the pasta later in the cooking process.
• It works best for hearty meals where pasta is fully integrated into the dish.
• Some pasta dishes work particularly well in slow cookers because the pasta absorbs the flavours from the sauce.
• Cooking the pasta separately until it's 'al dente', and then putting it into the slow cooker at the last minute, might give you better control, but you could lose out on the extra flavour - and there's more washing up!

Method

Here’s how to do it:

Prepare your sauce or base

Start by cooking the main part of your dish in the slow cooker (sauce, vegetables, or fish). This usually takes a few hours depending on the recipe.

Add the pasta towards the end

Stir the pasta into the simmering sauce, making sure there's enough liquid to cook it, as the pasta will absorb it. If there isn't enough liquid, you can add some extra stock or water at any point.

Don't forget that adding cold water will cool the whole dish down. This could stall the cooking, and of course, if the pasta sits in the liquid for too long while it heats up again, it will get mushy.

Check the timing on the pasta packaging.

• Add regular pasta to the slow cooker about 10-15 minutes before the dish is ready to serve, as it cooks relatively quickly.
• For whole wheat pasta, which tends to cook slower, you might add it 20-30 minutes before the dish is ready to serve.
• By contrast, gluten-free pasta is really quick to cook, between 4 and 10 minutes.

Be vigilant

Stir the dish occasionally to prevent sticking, and check for doneness at regular intervals until the pasta is cooked through.

Taste and serve

You can check a little bit of pasta from time to time, to see whether it's done to your tastes. Once the pasta is ready, turn off the slow cooker, and serve your dish.