Recipe Tuesday - Cheesy Italian Tortellini

This week's kid approved recipe comes from Tracy Stallard over at Allrecipes.com.  The great thing about this recipe, like most of the recipes I recommend, is that you can take it down to the bare bones and then adjust it as much or as little as you'd like to your own family's tastes.  Again, I was surprised that my children liked this.  Now when I serve it I actually get exclamations of  "Oh I love those noodles, mommy". 

First here are the ingredients and instructions as outlined in the recipe.  Direct Link to photos and recipe here.

Ingredients

1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound Italian sausage, casings removed
1 (16 ounce) jar marinara sauce
1 (4.5 ounce) can sliced mushrooms
1 (14.5 ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes, undrained
1 (9 ounce) package refrigerated or fresh cheese tortellini
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions


1.Crumble the ground beef and Italian sausage into a large skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until browned. Drain.

2.Combine the ground meats, marinara sauce, mushrooms, and tomatoes in a slow cooker. Cover, and cook on LOW heat for 7 to 8 hours.

3.Stir in the tortellini, and sprinkle the mozzarella and cheddar cheese over the top. Cover and cook for 15 more minutes on LOW, or until the tortellini is tender.
 
 
Now for Zeemaid's take on the recipe. 
 
 #1.  I generally use ground turkey and mild Italian ground turkey sausage if we have it on hand. If not, I just use the ground turkey.  My children are not keen on spicy dishes anyways.  So make it mild if you need to.
 
#2.  My children don't like mushrooms so I omit that.
 
#3.  This does not have to sit and stew all day.  I've actually started it mid afternoon and still had a wonderful dish by 4pm.  You can opt to just use marinara sauce if you like.  If you're not adding in a can of the undrained diced tomatoes.. then add a small can of water to the pot for extra liquid.  I've used different kinds of marinara sauce and even made my own four cheese sauce by adding different cheeses to it while it cooked.  Yummy. 
 
#4.  I always boil my tortellini first. The first time I made this I added it in as per the directions and we found that the tortellini was not cooked all the way through.  So I boil it and then add it to the crock pot for the 15 minutes.   It has never been overcooked.
 
 
This was even a great and economical dish to serve friends when they came over.  One package of family sized tortellini and one package of ground turkey served 7 people.  Excellent dish to serve with salad. They absolutely raved about it and asked for the recipe. 
 
Like this recipe there are many more great recipes like it over at AllRecipes.com