This is the meal for the night when the fresh food has run out and the shop is not happening until tomorrow. Pasta, a tin of tomatoes, a handful of red lentils and an onion, and you have a dinner that feeds four people properly.

It is worth knowing not because it is clever but because it is reliable. The lentils cook down into the tomatoes and thicken the sauce into something that clings to the pasta rather than sliding off it, which is the whole trick. There is nothing to look up and nothing to buy.

Serves
4
Prep
10 minutes
Cook
30 minutes
Two unlabelled tins, a jar of red lentils, dry pasta, onion and garlic on a pale bench

Ingredients

  • 400 g pasta, whatever shape you have
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely diced
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 cup (200 g) red lentils, rinsed
  • 2 x 400 g tins diced tomatoes
  • 2 cups (500 ml) vegetable stock
  • 2 tsp dried mixed herbs, or 1 tsp each dried oregano and basil
  • 2 large handfuls baby spinach, optional
  • Salt and plenty of pepper

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a large deep pan over medium heat. Cook the onion for six or seven minutes, until soft and beginning to sweeten. Add the garlic and cook for one minute more.
  2. Add the lentils, both tins of tomatoes, the stock and the herbs. Stir well and bring to a gentle simmer.
  3. Simmer uncovered for twenty to twenty five minutes, stirring now and then so nothing catches on the bottom. The lentils will soften and break down, and the sauce will thicken considerably. If it tightens more than you want, loosen it with a splash of water.
  4. While the sauce simmers, cook the pasta in well salted water. Before you drain it, scoop out a cup of the cooking water and keep it.
  5. Stir the spinach through the sauce until it wilts, which takes about a minute. Season generously with salt and pepper, and taste it properly. A sauce this simple needs more salt than you expect.
  6. Toss the drained pasta through the sauce, loosening with the reserved pasta water a little at a time until it coats every piece.

A simple swap. Brown or green lentils work instead of red. Give them an extra ten minutes and a little more stock, and expect a chunkier sauce that holds its shape rather than melting into the tomatoes. Both are good, they are just different.

Make it your own. A grated carrot added with the onion sweetens the sauce and disappears entirely. A handful of frozen peas or corn stirred in at the end. A pinch of chilli flakes if your household likes heat. A little lemon zest at the very end lifts the whole thing and is worth trying once.

Why this works from the pantry

Lentils, tinned tomatoes and pasta are one of the most useful combinations you can keep in a cupboard, and it is worth understanding why rather than just taking it on trust.

The tomatoes bring acidity and depth, and tinned are genuinely better than fresh for a cooked sauce because they are picked ripe and they are consistent all year. The lentils do two jobs at once. They thicken the sauce as they break down, which is why you do not need cream or anything blended, and they turn a bowl of pasta into a meal that actually holds you. Red lentils in particular need no soaking and cook in about twenty minutes, which is roughly how long a good tomato sauce wants anyway.

None of the three go off. All three are cheap. Between them they cover the night when there is nothing in the fridge, and they do it without anyone having to be clever about it.

Keep these on hand

If this meal is going to be available to you on a bad evening, the ingredients have to already be in the house. That is the only part that requires any planning at all.

Keep a couple of tins of diced tomatoes, a packet of red lentils, and pasta in a shape you like. Onions and garlic, which sit happily in a cupboard for weeks. Stock, whether cubes, powder or liquid. Dried herbs. Olive oil, salt and pepper.

A bag of spinach in the fridge or frozen vegetables in the freezer will get you the greens, and neither is essential to the meal working.

That short list also covers a great many other dinners, which is the argument for a small pantry that gets used rather than a large one that mostly waits. There is more on that in 10 Plant-Based Pantry Staples That Make Everyday Meals Easier, and if the leftovers are what interest you, cold sauce and pasta turn into a very good lunch alongside the ideas in Simple WFPB Bowls for Busy Days.