One pot meal and low carb, this easy spagetti recipe is one of my favorite lazy dinner ideas. Black Bean Spaghetti with alternatives for all ingredients. Throw together and serve in less than 20 minutes.
It seems almost silly to put this down as a recipe because it’s not that intense. But it is a dinner the kids love, and I do make it a lot.
Really, the gold here is I simplified a spaghetti recipe to keep it to one pot for easier clean up, a lazy sauce that doesn’t suck (though not as good as homemade), and I made it diabetic friendly.
Black Bean Spaghetti
Equipment
- The Only Bean – Organic Black Bean Spaghetti Noodle, Gluten Free Pasta, 8oz (6 Pack) – Walmart.com
- Prego Pasta Sauce, Tomato Sauce with Italian Sausage & Garlic, 23.5 Ounce Jar – Walmart.com
Ingredients
- 2 Packs of Black Bean Noodles
- 2 Jars of Prego Italian Sausage Sauce
- Optional Seasonings: Garlic Salt Oregano, Italian Seasoning, Paprika…
- Optional Toppings: Mozzarella Parmesan, Pepperoncini Peppers
- Optional Veggies: Mushrooms Green Pepper, Onion, Red Pepper, Zucchini, Collard Greens, Spinach, Eggplant…
- Optional Sides: Garlic Bread or Bread and Butter
Instructions
- [mv_schema_meta name="Boil The Noodles"]
- In a large pot, like really large pot, over high heat, cover noodles with water, add some Garlic Himalayan Salt, and bring to a boil.
- Once noodles are tender enough to eat, reduce heat to low and drain.
- [mv_schema_meta name="Add Sauce"]
- Once drained, dump 1/2 a jar of sauce over the noodles and stir.
- Slowly pour in other sauce (about 1/2 of a jar at a time) and stir.
- Season to your tasting. I usually add garlic salt (or garlic) and a TBSP of oregano or Italian Seasoning. Stir that in.
- [mv_schema_meta name="Add Vegetables"]
- Add rinsed, and sliced or chopped if need be, veggies. I usually prefer mushrooms, and sometimes red pepper.
- Stir them in.
- Let simmer until veggies are done. Usually the heat from the noodles will cook the sauce, but you want to give it a few minutes for any veggies.
Where did I get this Recipe?
Chef Gordon Ramsay obviously. Like it’s one of his most complicated, complex recipes ever. If you screw it up, he will yell at you so loud, he will spit in your food by accident. I’m kidding. That’s not true. Chef Gordon would cringe at this recipe. It’s so basic and primitive.
I really just had one of those nights where I didn’t want to cook and was begging the kids to want Pizza for dinner, and they wanted spaghetti. So I made spaghetti. The laziest way possible. And they loved it. I think they like it better than my homemade sauce, but that doesn’t mean it IS better than my homemade sauce because these beings were still in elementary school enjoying, loving, glorifying school hot lunch at the time I made this in this way in particular.
But they still like it. They still beg me to make it. And I don’t mind it.
Also, with the need to have lower carbs in our diet, pasta can take that diet way over the edge, so I’ve done my homework for the best low carb pasta, and tried them all. The kids liked the black bean before they embraced edamame, and while they will eat either, I think they prefer the black bean because it’s neat looking. Like Goth Spaghetti.
Ingredients for Black Bean Spaghetti Recipe
The main ingredients at its most basic form is…
- Noodles
- Sauce
Best Noodles for Spaghetti and Low Carb Diet
With keeping carbs down in mind, not quite Keto, but more diabetic friendly (where bean carbs are better than flour carbs)… the noodles I buy are any of the following:
The reason being, I got a kid with Type 2 Diabetes, so I got to watch the carbs, especially since she wants more than 1 cup of spaghetti for dinner. She would love to eat 10 cups of this in a 12 hour span if we’d let her. Spaghetti is her vice. Really it’s tomatoes, but Spaghetti is her favorite.
So the healthiest options as far as Keto and Carbs is concerned is
- Black Bean Noodles
- Edamame Noodles
The kids will eat those. But they are hard to find noodles, pricier than your basic noodles, and they don’t taste as great as regular noodles.
What I didn’t list is the yellow or red lentil noodles. It’s because I always end up boiling the noodles too long, and those break up and turn into mush pretty quickly, and they aren’t much lower in carbs than wheat noodles.
But the second tier of healthy noodles, after reading the nutrition info with half a mind for over 30 different brands and kinds of noodles…
- Wheat Noodles
- Protein Noodles
Those two are usually at my Walmart, and they aren’t priced much more than a dollar. The kids much prefer these because you cannot tell them apart from regular noodles. And they are lower in carbs than regular noodles.
Best Jarred Sauce for Spaghetti
I’m looking, again at low carbs, but also taste. I’m a very picky sauce eater. So I’m down to two jars I prefer if given options…
- Rao’s Homemade Sauce
- Prego Italian Sausage and Garlic
The main reason is Rao is the lowest carbs you’re going to find in a spaghetti sauce, but it’s pricy for sauce.
Prego is the only one who doesn’t use soybean oil as a preservative. One of my kids is allergic to milk and soy proteins, so I try to keep the soybean oils down.
As far as flavor is concerned, the best jarred sauce you’ll ever find is Figaretti’s Sauce & Oliverio’s. But these two are well known restaurants in West Virginia (Figaretti’s being in Wheeling, Oliverio’s being in Clarksburg), so they might be difficult to obtain in California. But if you can order some online, it is well worth the try.
The grocery store sauce I like the flavor of, but I can’t always find it, and it’s cheaper than Prego or Ragu, it’s Del Monte canned sauce, preferably the garlic and onion one, mixed with a jar of their canned diced tomatoes in Basil, Garlic and Oregano. Those tomatoes and that marinade with them is the best flavor as far as canned stuff goes.
How to Doctor Up Crap Sauce
First of all, if the ONLY thing available at the store is a sauce I know tastes bad, I’ll inevitably just get crushed tomatoes and add stuff to it. Like you want a base for the most part. Usually the 3 cheese ones are big nopes. Like the tomatoes are a better starting point because you can’t remove those processed flavors.
But if you are getting Prego Italian Sausage…
My kids will eat that without me doctoring it up at all. Not even salt and pepper. I won’t eat it. But the kids will.
So to doctor up jarred spaghetti sauce, you have 3 options to add stuff…
Seasonings
This is the bare minimum, and has the most maximum effect… add seasonings.
In my experience, most sauce is lacking garlic, and some greens. So at bare minimum, I usually do a little garlic salt and some oregano or Italian Seasoning.
Some specific seasonings that usually works well…
- Minced Garlic (not really a seasoning, but kind of preferred for sodium reasons)
- Garlic Salt (Himalayan Salt is supposedly healthier)
- Oregano
- Italian Seasoning
- Paprika
- Fennel Seeds
- Thyme
- Basil
- Onion Powder
Veggies
This is more good for beefing up the sauce to get more food in each bite, for that filling feeling, to help reduce your kid from overeating, but it does add a little flavor depending on which options you go with.
Beefing Up Veggies
- Zucchini
- Eggplant
- Collard Greens
- Spinach
- Carrots
Flavor Veggies
- Onions
- Green Pepper
- Red Pepper
- Mushrooms
Meats
The reason I don’t add extra meat is I’m trying to keep it down to a one pot meal.
Extra Work Meats
- Ground Beef
- Italian Sausage
- Chicken
Easy One-Pot Meats
- Microwaved Italian Meatballs
- Bacon Grease
- Pepperoni
- Chicken Stock / Cubes
- Beef Stock / Cubes
Other Stuff
- White Wine
- Red Wine
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Juice from a Pepper Jar
Toppings
This can really impact the flavor per dish, so like you add what you like, and your kids add what they like, and yay! Everyone is happy.
The downside is this can really turn your grocery expense up. Like you can more than double the expense by adding these ingredients…
My favorite, ideally, is to add mozzarella, parmesan, and pepperoncini peppers.
Ideas…
- Mozzarella Cheese
- Parmesan Cheese
- Romano Cheese
- Pepperoncini Peppers
- Banana Peppers
- Red Peppers
- Crushed Red Pepper
- Jalapeno Peppers
- Hot Sauce
- Pepperoni
- Salami
- Real Bacon Bits
The best thing about spaghetti is that its easy to adjust any recipe to your preferences, and better, your kids’ preferences. There’s lots of room to play here, and lots of opportunities to add flavor without it being visible (such as adding bacon grease instead of bacon).
But of course, my favorite part is that I throw the crap in the pot, sit down, dump water and add some stuff, sit down, and then serve.
Definitely an easy multi-tasking meal.
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