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Crockpot Tortellini

Italian sausage and a cream sauce that builds itself over four hours. The pasta joins for the last twenty minutes.

Prep
15 min
Cook
4 hr 10 min
Makes
Serves 6
Jump to the recipe
Tortellini in a creamy sauce with ham and parsley
Photo: Hans / Pixabay

Slow cookers cannot brown anything. They top out below boiling and browning starts around 140°C, so anything that needs a crust has to get it in a frying pan first. Skip that step with sausage and you get pale, slightly boiled meat and a sauce that tastes thin — the browning is most of the flavor.

Tip the pan juices in too. That is where the browning went.

The pasta and the cream both go in near the end. Fresh tortellini needs twenty minutes at slow-cooker temperature, and four hours of it produces glue. Cream held at heat for hours separates and develops a cooked, slightly sour edge; added at the end it stays sweet and smooth.

If you want it as a soup instead, creamy spinach tortellini soup is the same flavors with more broth.

Cream cheese rather than only heavy cream. It brings acidity and enough body that the sauce clings to the pasta instead of pooling underneath it. Cube it and add it warm, or it sits in lumps.

Tortellini cooking in a steaming pot
Photo: scratsmacker / Pixabay

Slow cooker tortellini, printed

Italian sausage and a cream sauce that builds itself over four hours. The pasta joins for the last twenty minutes.

Your shopping list

  • 1 lb (500 g) Italian sausages, casings removed
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 3 cups (700 ml) chicken stock
  • 14 oz (400 g) tin chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • ½ tsp chilli flakes
  • 18 oz (500 g) fresh cheese tortellini
  • 7 oz (200 g) cream cheese, cubed and at room temperature
  • ½ cup (120 ml) heavy cream
  • 1 cup (100 g) grated parmesan
  • 3½ oz (100 g) baby spinach

How the slow cooker tortellini comes together

  1. 1 Brown the sausage meat hard in a frying pan, breaking it up, until there are real dark patches — 8 minutes. Move it to the slow cooker with every scrap of fat and juice.
  2. 2 Soften the onion in the same pan for 5 minutes, add the garlic for 30 seconds, and scrape it all in.
  3. 3 Add the stock, tomatoes, oregano and chilli. Cook on low 4 hours.
  4. 4 Stir in the tortellini and the cubed cream cheese. Cook on high 20 minutes, stirring once, until the pasta is tender and the cheese has melted through.
  5. 5 Turn the cooker off. Stir in the cream, parmesan and spinach and leave 5 minutes with the lid on.
  6. 6 Season and serve.

Notes on the cream cheese

  • Room-temperature cream cheese melts smoothly. Straight from the fridge it stays in lumps however long you stir.
  • This does not hold well on the warm setting once the pasta is in. Serve within half an hour.