I was SO WORRIED that this wouldn’t turn out well, but it ended up turning out perfectly. Score one for me! You can use your crock pot to make like… a shit ton of things. Turns out pasta is on that list. SO. How do you do it?

The first thing I did was toss in 3 chicken breasts that were mostly frozen. I covered them with two jars of pasta sauce (I was being lazy. I usually make my own!) and turned the crock pot on high for like 5 hours. I don’t really pay attention to how long stuff cooks in this thing, so pardon my lack of proper instruction. Basically, I stuck them in and then took a very long nap to get rid of a migraine. When I woke up it was around 1:30am.

I checked the chicken around 1:45, poked it with a fork to see if it was done. It was, so I poured in a box of penne, making sure the sauce covered the pasta completely. Branden got home around 2:15, and I checked the pasta. It had soaked up all the extra water from the sauce (you know how jar sauces are kind of watery) so I added about 6 ounces of water and stirred it all around. About 10 minutes later, it was done! And don’t worry, the sauce was NOT watery once the pasta was all cooked.  I actually think I’m going to make pasta like this more often, if I use jar sauce. It really cuts down on the watery-sauce-y-ness.

I cooked everything on high, mostly because I was in a hurry and because my chicken was still mostly frozen. If you’re using raw, thawed chicken, you could cook on low or high, depending on how soon you want to eat. DO NOT ADD THE PASTA AT THE BEGINNING OF COOKING. You will end up with a goopy mush, and no one wants to eat that, ok?

Have any of you made pasta in the crock pot? What types of noodles have you used? Anyone tried spaghetti?! I’d be worried about those noodles sticking together. haha.

I adapted this recipe to suit our tastes. 

Ingredients

• 2 cooked, shredded chicken breasts (I cooked mine and then pulsed them in my food processor a couple of times)
• 1 8oz block of cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups colby jack, shredded
• 1 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch mix
• a few splashes of hot sauce
• 2 cans of crescent rolls

Mix the chicken, cream cheese, cheese, ranch mix, and hot sauce in a large bowl. Unroll the crescent rolls, and keeping the rectangles intact, separate the sheet into quarters. (Two triangles equal one rectangle) Lay the rectangle out on your baking sheet, and place about a quarter cup of the chicken mixture on and roll it up, sealing the ends when you’re done. Place seam-side down on the baking sheet. Repeat until you’ve filled all 8 rectangles. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Then flip the rolls and bake for another five minutes.