One-Pot Kale Fennel Pasta

One-pot kale fennel pasta cooks in the same pan as its accompanying ingredients – no need to boil a separate pot of water!

We all know the drill. You come home, you’re bone-tired, and you need a quick dinner that will feed everyone and feed them fast.

So you reach for your biggest stockpot and turn the faucet on full blast, filling it with water to bring a box of pasta to a boil. It’s the oldest trick in the book.

But I’ve got a new trick for you that keeps the stockpot in the cabinet and leaves you with one less dish to wash at the end of the night.

Here’s the thing: unless you’re stirring a hunk of butter into elbow noodles and calling it a night, you’ll be cooking something else to toss with your pasta. Why not make it a one-dish proposition?

With this technique, similar to the method used for simmering risotto, you’re letting the pasta cook in broth or other flavorful liquid at the same time and in the same pan as its accompaniments.

Unlike risotto, however, these dishes are far less hands-on and time-consuming.

Give the pasta a quick stir every five minutes or so while you grab plates and silverware, catch up on email, make a salad, pour a (much-needed) drink, and before you know it, you can carry the whole shebang to the table.

Chefs already do this to an extent, taking pasta out of the water a few minutes before it’s perfectly al dente and stirring it into whatever luscious sauce they’re simmering for the last bit of cooking time.

The pasta absorbs the sauce, giving it extra oomph, and the sauce takes on some of the pasta starch to thicken it a little more.

This recipe takes the idea one step further, so you can make linguini with clam sauce that bubbles in rich, briny clam broth or a comforting pot of meatball-studded pasta that tastes just like slow-simmered Italian wedding soup.

And everyone’s all about adding more kale to their repertoire these days, which is great, since it’s one of those vegetables that benefits from a nice braise.

This one-pot kale fennel pasta takes advantage of this tendency by simmering both pasta and fresh chopped kale in chicken broth until they’re tender.

Fennel in the pan retains its structure even after it’s been cooked for 20 minutes, giving the dish a hint of sweet crunch, while a dash of red pepper flakes bring the heat.