Adding pasta to your slow cooked meals

When you add pasta to a slow cooker for the full 4-8 hours of cooking time, the resulting pasta will be little more than mush when you go to serve it. The texture becomes quite gummy because the pasta noodles normally would only be cooked for 8-14 minutes in boiling water, but this is doing that about twenty times over!

When you want to add pasta to something you are making in a slow cooker, it is best to pre-cook your pasta noodles as usual and then add it to the slow cooker for the last half hour of cooking. This ensures the pasta is cooked and can absorb the flavors but that it won’t be overcooked by the time you serve.