The red lentils are the part that makes this different from every other beef and pasta. They cook down into the sauce and mostly disappear, and they bring 16 g of fiber with them.
The sauce is a can of whole tomatoes and three seasonings, not a jar. That is worth saying because “red sauce” usually means something you bought already made.
Ingredients
- 2 lb ground beef, 96% lean (Farm to Table Fresh sirloin)
- 1 box cavatelli (Frankies 457), 304 g dry
- 140 g red lentils, dry (Aurora Natural)
- 1 can whole tomatoes, 28 oz (Organico Bello)
- 15 g grated parmesan (Wellsley Farms)
- Water, enough to cover the lentils
- Salt, garlic powder, Italian herbs — I did not measure any of the three
Method
Three pots. The beef, the lentils and the pasta all cook on their own and only meet at the end.
- Beef in one pot, browned, and then pour the liquid off. There is not much of it at 96% lean and it is mostly water, but it did not smell good, so out it went.
- Lentils in a second pot with enough water to cover them, simmering about 15 minutes. They drink most of it.
- Blend the canned tomatoes smooth — immersion blender, straight in — and pour that over the lentils with the salt, garlic powder and Italian herbs. Another 20 minutes. By the end the lentils have gone soft and the sauce has thickened around them.
- Cavatelli in the third pot, cooked the way the box says.
- All of it into a big glass bowl at the end — beef, sauce, pasta — and mix. Parmesan over the top.
Notes
The numbers come off five labels. The beef is 8 of its 4 oz servings: 1,200 calories and 192 g of protein. The full box of cavatelli is 760 and 28. The lentils are 4 of their 35 g servings: 520 and 36. The can of tomatoes is 210 and 12. The parmesan is 60 and 6. That is 2,750 calories and 274 g of protein in the pot.
I portioned it into four, so that is what the numbers up top are divided by. Honestly it might be five or six. It is more food than it looks like going in, and I have not eaten my way through a whole batch yet to find out. If you split it further: five servings is 550 calories and 55 g of protein, six is 458 and 46. Same pot, smaller plates.
The lentils earn their place. 520 calories buys 36 g of protein and 16 g of fiber, which is a better trade than the pasta sitting next to them is making. Half the fiber in the whole pot comes out of that one bag.
Treat 2,750 as a ceiling rather than an exact number. I poured the liquid off the beef, and some fat goes with it. There is only about 32 g of fat in the whole 2 lb package to begin with — call it 290 calories — so even if a good part of that went down the drain, it moves the total by a few percent, not by a lot. That is the argument for lean beef here. Brown 2 lb of 80/20 and you pour off several hundred calories you cannot count, and the label stops describing your dinner.
Sodium is the soft number again. The salt was not measured — I went with my heart, the same as the sofrito chicken — so I am not printing a total I cannot stand behind. The parmesan and the tomatoes are both minor next to whatever the salt did.