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Pasta with minced meat and tomato paste

Pasta with Ground Meat and Tomato Paste

Quick, very tasty, and simple — for the whole family! Pasta with ground meat and tomato paste is perfect for a quick, delicious dinner. You can have it ready in 20 minutes. You can make it with meat or with mushrooms, turning it into a fully meatless, vegan version! And by the way, it's also just right for a romantic dinner!

Maria

Recipe author

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Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Ground meat

500

Spaghetti

400

Tomatoes (in their own juice)

100

Hard cheese

Tomato paste

Garlic

Butter

Basil

Ground black pepper

Salt

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 20 % 11 g

Fats 33 % 18 g

Carbohydrates 46 % 25 g

306 kcal

GI: 8 / 92 / 0

Cooking method

Cooking time: 25 min

Step 1:

How do you make pasta with ground meat and tomato paste? First, gather the ingredients you need. I use spaghetti in this recipe, but you can swap in another long pasta — tagliatelle, fettuccine, bucatini, or linguine. You can use ground beef, like I did, or a meat blend.
Step 2:

Grate the cheese on the fine or medium holes of a grater. You can use any cheese — if you want the dish to be closer to Italian, use Parmesan. But an ordinary hard cheese, like a Russian-style one, works too.
Step 3:

Peel the garlic and finely chop it with a knife.
Step 4:

On the stove, bring a large amount of salted water to a boil, figuring about 1 liter of water and a level tablespoon of salt per 100 g of pasta. That said, I'd use a little less salt, since the ground meat will be salted too. Add the spaghetti to the water and boil it until al dente, about 7–8 minutes.
Step 5:

While the pasta cooks, make the tomato-meat sauce. Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the ground meat and fry for about 5 minutes, breaking up the clumps, until all the meat has browned.
Step 6:

Depending on the quality of the meat and how much fat it has, it will give off more or less liquid. You can wait until most of the liquid evaporates, but I'd suggest not cooking it off too much — that way the sauce stays juicier. Add the chopped garlic to the skillet and fry everything together, stirring, for 2 minutes.
Step 7:

Add the tomato paste and stir. Simmer everything together for 2–3 minutes.
Step 8:

Add the tomatoes in their own juice to the ground meat. Season everything with salt and pepper and stir. Heat everything together for another 2–3 minutes.

If you don't have tomatoes in their own juice, you can make your own: take 2 medium tomatoes and peel them. Grate one on a fine grater to make a purée, and cut the other into small pieces. Then stir them together. If you like, you can add a little ketchup to the tomato mixture.
Step 9:

While the meat finishes cooking, drain the cooked spaghetti in a colander and let the water run off.
Step 10:

At this point you can simply add the pasta to the skillet with the meat and toss it together. But I'd suggest a more elegant presentation: arrange the pasta on plates, spoon the tomato-meat mixture on top, sprinkle with cheese, and garnish with a sprig of basil. Enjoy!

For how to cook pasta properly, how to cook it al dente, how to choose a quality product so you don't end up disappointed, and much more, see the article "Pasta — the fine points of choosing it and the secrets of cooking it."
All oils are fine only up to a certain temperature — the smoke point — beyond which the oil begins to burn and forms toxic compounds, including carcinogens. For how to figure out the right frying temperature and choose the best oil for frying — and which oils are better not to use at all — read here.
For how to choose the perfect pot for soup, porridge, or pickling cucumbers, see the article on cookware.