If you’re always on the lookout for quick and easy meals for busy nights, add this one to your list. It’s basically three ingredients, takes just a few minutes to put together, and my family loves it.

Sometimes the best dinners aren’t really recipes at all!

For this easy slow cooker dinner, you’ll need:

• 1 jar of your favorite pasta sauce
• 1 package Italian sausage
• 1 (16 oz.) bag frozen tortellini
• Water
• Parmesan cheese for serving, if you’d like

That’s it!

An Easy Dump-and-Go Slow Cooker Dinner

Start by pouring your jar of pasta sauce into the Home & Away Slow Cooker. I’m partial to Rao’s because I like the ingredients and it doesn’t have added sugar, but use whatever sauce your family likes.

Here’s one of my favorite little kitchen tricks: fill the empty sauce jar about halfway with water, put the lid back on, and give it a shake. Pour that into the slow cooker, too.

You’ll get every last bit of sauce out of the jar, and the extra liquid will come in handy when you add the tortellini later.

Next, add the Italian sausage.

You can brown the sausage first if you prefer, but I don’t bother. The whole point of this dinner is to keep it quick and easy! You can also cut the sausage into pieces before cooking, but I usually leave the links whole.

Give everything a stir, put on the lid, and cook on LOW until the sausage reaches a safe internal temperature of 160°F. Mine was ready in about 3½ hours, although slow cookers and sausage thickness can vary.

Add the Tortellini at the End

Once your sausage is completely cooked, add the entire bag of frozen tortellini and stir.

Put the lid back on and continue cooking on LOW for approximately 45–60 minutes, or until the tortellini is cooked through and tender.

And dinner is done!

I like to serve each bowl with an Italian sausage and plenty of that cheesy tortellini and sauce. Add a little freshly grated Parmesan on top and you have a really simple dinner that feels a lot more substantial than the amount of work you put into it.

Make It Your Own

This is one of those meals that’s easy to change depending on what you have on hand.

Want a meatless dinner? Skip the sausage and make the saucy tortellini on its own. You could also add some spinach toward the end of the cooking time or serve it with a simple salad and garlic bread.

And if you’re feeding younger kids, you can slice the cooked sausage before serving so everyone gets a little bit in their bowl.

Why I Like the Deluxe Home & Away Slow Cooker

I made this in my Pampered Chef Deluxe Home & Away Slow Cooker, and this is exactly the kind of recipe I think a slow cooker should make easy.

One feature I really appreciate is that it automatically switches to the warming setting when the cooking time is finished. If everyone isn’t ready to sit down at exactly the same time, dinner can stay warm until you are.

It’s also designed for taking food with you. The lid clips into place for traveling, there’s a cord wrap on the back, and the handle makes it much easier to carry. When you’re serving, the lid can hang on the holder so condensation drips right back into the slow cooker instead of all over the counter.

That makes this recipe a great option for potlucks, tailgating, family gatherings, or feeding a crowd, too.

A Dinner Worth Keeping in Your Back Pocket

This dinner was actually a request from my daughter-in-law. When I asked what we should have for dinner, she said she hadn’t had tortellini in a while.

Done!

Those are the meals I love sharing most—the ones that don’t require a long ingredient list, complicated prep, or a lot of cleanup.

Keep a bag of tortellini & package of Italian sausage  in your freezer and a jar of sauce in the pantry,  and you’ve got an easy dinner waiting for one of those nights when you don’t have time to think about what’s for dinner.

Three ingredients. Four if you count the Parmesan. And very little work.

That’s my kind of busy-night dinner!