Beautiful and delicious, Easy Vegetable Rotini Dinner needs to be on your table tonight.

Here comes another fantastic meatless monday dinner folks; Easy Vegetable Rotini Dinner! What a beautiful, delicious and self-satisfying recipe. A yummy-healthy dinner on the table for your family in about 40 minutes- YES I’ll TAKE MORE PLEASE. Use up fresh grown garden veggies and whip them into a hearty and chunky sauce to serve over rotini noodles. Make it MORE fun by purchasing multi-colored vegetable rotini to compliment the colorful fresh garden vegetables in your sauce.

Easy Vegetable Rotini Dinner uses all fresh ingredients like zucchini, carrots and tomato.

First up fill a stock pot or dutch oven with water and set it to boil. While the pasta water warms, you’ll start on the sauce by sauteing (cooking) diced zucchini until it starts to get brown on a few sides. Remove it and place in a bowl. Stir some diced tomato into the zucchini and set the bowl aside. Return to the skillet and start building the sauce by cooking diced carrot, onion, tomato paste, garlic and some optional red pepper flakes if you really want to spice things up.

Sprinkle over some flour and cook it for just a minute. Add in some chicken broth and scrape the bottom of the pan to get all that brown stuff (fond) off the bottom and into your sauce. Fond is the brown stuff stuck to the bottom and it is flavor-packed! You definitely want to include it in your sauce (unless it’s burnt black, you don’t want that; just scrape it out and toss it.)

Simmer the sauce until it thickens and remove from heat. Then stir in the zucchini/tomato mixture to coat.

The Health benefits of Easy Vegetable Rotini Dinner

Apparently zucchini helps with digestion, slowing aging, lowering blood sugar levels, supports heart and eye health, boosts energy (helping with weight loss) and even improve thyroid and adrenal functions. Carrots also help by adding fiber, vitamin K, potassium and antioxidants. They also have beta-Carotene and vitamin A which are supplements that your eyes need to be healthy- so it’s true- carrots are good for you eyes hahaha! Potassium rich tomato is also great for fighting pancreatic cancer and is loaded with antioxidants. Don’t skip on the fresh basil when you make this meal, pick up a small bunch at the grocery store (or use some from your garden like me) it’s essential in bringing a bright fresh flavor to the whole dish.

Easy Vegetable Rotini Dinner makes such a satisfying meal, especially if you used your very own home-grown veggies in the recipe. My family loved this dish and yours will too; enjoy it! I want to know how it goes for you so don’t hesitate to leave a comment for me below!

Easy Vegetable Rotini Dinner

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★★★★★

4.5 from 2 reviews

• Author: Emily
• Total Time: 10 hours 20 minutes
• Yield: 8 servings 1x

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Description

This beautiful pasta dinner is made with a few simple fresh garden veggies and is hardy enough to please any meat-lover on meatless monday. It’s a fast & healthy weeknight dish too- especially when you use vegetable infused rotini pasta. 

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 2 small zucchini chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
• 2 small sized tomatoes or one large tomato, core and seeds removed, flesh chopped into 1/4 inch cubes
• 1 onion, minced
• 2 medium sized carrots, peeled and chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1 12 ounce box vegetable rotini pasta or regular rotini pasta
• 1/3 cup minced fresh basil leaves
• 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper

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Instructions

1. Fill a large pot with approximately 3 quarts of water and place over high heat.
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium-high heat for 1-2 minutes. Place chopped zucchini pieces into the skillet and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Saute (cook) for about 6 minutes, stirring frequently, until the zucchini is browning on some sides. Remove from heat, transfer to a clean bowl and stir in chopped tomato. 
3. Return the skillet to medium-high heat and add in 2 more tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add the onion and carrots to the skillet and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Stir often until the carrots are lightly browned, about 5-6 minutes. 
4. Stir in garlic and tomato paste and cook for about 30 seconds, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
5. Gently pour in the chicken broth, stirring and scraping up any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Bring the skillet contents to a gentle boil until thickened, about 1 or 2 minutes, then remove from heat and cover to keep warm.
6. Add the rotini to the now boiling pot of water along with 1 tablespoon of salt. Stir and boil until al dente. Drain pasta and place in serving dish or platter. Pour zucchini sauce over pasta. Drizzle one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil over the dish, and sprinkle fresh basil leaves and parmesan cheese over the top and serve.

• Prep Time: 10 hours
• Cook Time: 20 minutes
• Category: dinner
• Cuisine: Italian

Nutrition

• Calories: 266
• Sugar: 3.5 g
• Sodium: 421 mg
• Fat: 10.6 g
• Saturated Fat: 3 g
• Unsaturated Fat: 7.6 g
• Carbohydrates: 33.3 g
• Fiber: 1.8 g
• Protein: 10.8 g
• Cholesterol: 39 mg