My family has been making the recipe for at least three generations. It’s a very inexpensive meal that’s very tasty and filling. You can use the leftovers for lunches or freeze them for a ready-made family meal some other time.
Ingredients:
1 lb cannellini (white) beans
1 lb ditalini pasta (or whatever kind you prefer)
1 large onion
2-3 cloves garlic
28 oz can crushed tomatoes or tomato puree
Salt and pepper to taste
- Rinse beans and soak overnight in water.
- In a large pot, saute onions and garlic in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil until tender.
- Add tomatoes, salt and pepper, stir well. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 1/2 hour, stirring occasionally.
- Boil beans until tender. Ladle out about 1 cup of the water and set aside. Drain the beans.
- Boil pasta until it is just shy of being al dente and drain. It will finish cooking in the tomato sauce.
- Stir the pasta, beans and reserved liquid from the beans into the tomato sauce. Cook for 5 more minutes.
Serves six
You could substitute any other bean you like for the white beans. Canned beans can also be used in place of dry beans, which eliminates the need to soak them over night.
Some variations on the family recipe:
If adding bacon:
Cook the bacon in the same pot you’re going to cook the tomatoes in. Drain off all but about 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat before adding the onions & garlic and don’t add any olive oil.
If adding ground beef:
Brown the ground beef in a skillet and drain off the grease.
Add the browned ground beef to the tomato sauce in step 3 of the recipe.
Italian sausage variation one:
Cut the sausage into bite size chunks and brown with the onions and garlic in step 2 of the recipe, with only 1 tablespoon of olive oil instead of 2.
Italian sausage variation two:
Remove the sausage from the casing and follow the instructions for ground beef.
Herbs can be added to the tomato sauce if desired.
