Slow Cooker, Vegetarian

Lazy Day Slow Cooker Tortellini Casserole

You know what I love? EASY RECIPES. I think this one is so easy, Rufus could manage to get it together if I really needed him to.

“But I don’t want to do anything! Except make a bed out of this bag.”

Ingredients

Most “easy” recipes are simple because they involve few ingredients. That’s for sure true for this slow cooker tortellini casserole. All you will need is:

A big bag of greens, sauce, cheese, and packaged tortellini or ravioli are all staples I usually have on hand. That’s how they led to this easy creation!
  • One 20 ounce package tortellini (I used Target brand cheese tortellini. Ravioli would work fine too!)
  • 1 jar sauce of your choice (I used a 24 oz jar of my favorite Prego Sensitive Recipe)
  • 1 bag mozzarella cheese
  • A buttload of Kale (I didn’t measure, but hopefully my photos will help you guess well enough!)

Another great thing about this simple recipe is the fact that you can easily customize. Not a fan of red sauce? No problem! Make it an Alfredo casserole. How about vodka sauce? Sun-dried tomato Alfredo? Possibilities are endless!

You can also switch up your greens. Not a kale person? Grab a bag of spinach instead. Throw in more veggies if you want, while you’re at it. If I had some mushrooms or zucchini on hand the night I made this, I might have thrown them in there, too. You could absolutely add some browned ground meat to add protein to this dish. It’s hard to mess up anything that is wrapped in a blanket of cheese and sauce.

Instructions

  1. Lightly grease the bottom and sides of your slow cooker with olive oil or cooking spray.
  2. Cover the bottom of your slow cooker with ~1/2 cup of sauce.
  3. Place down one layer of tortellini, cover generously with sauce, sprinkle with cheese, then top with kale (I’m not listing specific amounts of each because it depends on the size of your slow cooker. I used a 6-quart slow cooker, and you can see about how much I layered in the photos below).
  4. Continue layering until you run out of ingredients (I saved a little cheese to sprinkle on top of the entire thing, because who doesn’t love opening the lid to gooey cheese?)
  5. Cook on HIGH for 1 hour 45 mins-2 hours.
This is what my slow cooker looked like after one layer of tortellini, sauce, cheese, and kale were layered. I typically rip the kale into tiny pieces, but that’s not necessary.
I always like to make the top layer a sprinkle of cheese!

Don’t worry about making the layers perfect – it will all melt into cheesy goodness and you won’t notice a difference once you start shoveling it into your mouth!

The slow cooker is an amazing tool, but it usually does require some thinking ahead – especially if a recipe will be cooking for hours and hours. Not this one! I love that it comes together in about 2 hours total. WINNER WINNER, TORTELLINI DINNER!

This fed me and my husband for days, and we are hearty eaters!

If you are wild about sauce, I would consider adding another half jar or so to this recipe. A sprinkle of parmesan cheese on each serving tops everything off perfectly. Happy eating!

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