Quick and Easy Dinner Ideas: Pasta Dishes

Pasta dishes that claim to be quick and easy dinner ideas are a dime a dozen. But you want a dinner idea for right now. You don’t want to run to the store when dinner should be ready in less than an hour. Why not create your very own Pasta Dish with ingredients you already have?

Toss out the old run of the mill sauce and noodle pasta dishes and cookbooks. Make your creative side come to the surface, while designing a variety of quick and easy pasta dishes.

Quick and Easy Pasta Dish Dinner Idea #1 – Take Inventory

By no means do you need to write down the exact amount of all items in your kitchen. Just make a mental note of the items in your cabinets, refrigerator and freezer. It is a good idea to actually open them up and see things you may have forgotten about.

Quick and Easy Pasta Dish Dinner Idea #2 – Know the basics of what goes together

- Spaghetti noodles go well with meat and sauce

- Vegetables go with meat, sauce and noodles

- Macaroni and Cheese is pasta too

- Cream of Mushroom, Chicken, Celery and Broccoli Soups make great sauces

- Soups go great with meats and vegetables

Keep in mind the ingredients you like combined. It is irrelevant what professional chefs on TV think. This is your pasta dish. The only opinions that matter are yours and your family members or guests.

Quick and Easy Pasta Dish Dinner Idea #3 – Experiment

Remember in science class when you had to come up with a hypothesis before you started your experiment. Same rule applies to cooking. Think about the ingredients you have and which ones could work well together. Here are some Pasta Dish Examples:

- Add corn, green beans, mushrooms and/or olives to spaghetti sauce

- Add diced chicken, frozen chicken nuggets or chopped bacon

- Add Cream of Mushroom Soup for your sauce (undiluted)

- Try other pastas. If all you have is a box of Macaroni and Cheese then use the pasta and save the cheese packet for later, unless the cheese goes with your sauce.

- Add Cream of Mushroom, Broccoli, Celery or Chicken soup with the Macaroni and Cheese packet

- Add a “Cream of” soup to spaghetti sauce if you do not have enough. This can be reversed too.

- Add food coloring for holidays or just to confuse your family

Quick and Easy Pasta Dish Dinner Idea #4 – Give your new Pasta Dish an impressive name

Suggestions:

- Spaghetti á la Vege-táble

- Pasta de Chicken Nüggets

- Alfredo Macaroni

- Poorboy Macaroni Alfredo

- Cheesy Pasta with Vegetables

The name does not have to make sense, it is simply the stamp that says you are claiming it as your own. Make the same fun, slap your name on the beginning

Quick and Easy Pasta Dish Dinner Idea #5 – Make the Pasta Dish your Own

By naming your dinner, you have already taken the first step. Now write down the ingredients you used and how you prepared it. You have now created your very own Pasta Dish recipe. This way when the family loves the meal you can easily re-create it, instead of just saying you threw a bunch stuff together and don’t remember how you did it.

Quick and Easy Pasta Dish Dinner Idea #6 – Have Fun with it!

Are you not a very good cook? Do you feel you are too inexperienced to make your own recipe? Forget that nonsense! You can never learn and get better unless you try. The steps above are for anyone who can cook plain old spaghetti. If you have not done that before, the instructions are on the spaghetti noodle package. Never give up hope and Have Fun with It!

Want to see more Quick and Easy Dinner Recipes? Read this series:

Cooking Dinner when the Cupboards are Bare: Part I

Cooking Dinner when the Cupboards are Bare: Part II

Cooking Dinner when the Cupboards are Bare: Part III