You’re hungry, you’re tired, and you want dinner pronto without driving out to pick up an infarct burger at the closest fast food joint. Nope, you’re in the mood for pasta, and why not? Pasta’s inexpensive, delicious, and filling. But tonight you just don’t want to bother steaming the place up by boiling a pot of water while you simmer sauce. What to do? Make a skillet pasta that comes together faster than it takes to read the instructions in this article. If you stock your pantry with sauces and sauce mixes, and a variety of dried pasta shapes, dinner can be on the table well inside half an hour. For this meal, I picked a packet of Knorr® Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto sauce mix and angel hair pasta.

 

 
The beauty of angel hair pasta is that it cooks quickly, and the Knorr sauce mixes cook up in a flash, too. Combine the two cooking processes and you’re well on your way to reducing cooking to as fast as it can be without a microwave. Fast food like this does come at a price, though. You can’t put it on the stove and walk away. You’ll have to stand by and keep an eye on the skillet or your pasta will burn and the sauce will stick.

My instructions couldn’t be easier, and they’re a take-off from those on the sauce packet’s combine-stir-cook-eat method. First, assemble your tools: a 10-inch wide skillet and lid, a fork and measuring cup. Now put together the ingredients: half a pound of angel hair (serves two hungry people or three with light appetites), one Knorr pasta sauce packet, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Don’t have olive oil? Leave it out, no problem. Put one cup of water into the skillet, then open the sauce packet and sprinkle the powder over the water. Pour in the olive oil if you’ve got it:

 

 
Don’t turn on the heat yet. Stir the mix until the powder and oil is blended with the water. Now break your pasta in half so it will fit inside the skillet. Do this by gathering the pasta strands into a tight log, grab the log in both fists near the center, and snapping the log in two. (Be careful not to be stabbed in the eye with flying pieces of pasta!) With the sauce blended, drop the pasta strands over it in the skillet. Using your fork, press the pasta into the sauce, then pour another cup of water over it all:

 

 
You should have enough water to almost cover all the pasta:

 

 
Now turn on the heat to high and bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer the sauce. Cover the pasta and begin assembling a salad. Stir the pasta frequently to prevent sticking of sauce or pasta. It won’t take long for the pasta to cook and the sauce to thicken, perhaps four to five minutes. Add more water if the pasta is still a little crunchy once the sauce thickens:

 

 
Stir to bring up any sauce sticking to the skillet. When you can twist strands of pasta around a fork, and the sauce is thick, the dish is cooked through:

 

 
Turn off the heat, set the pasta aside to keep warm as you finish putting together a salad, then lift pasta and sauce from the skillet with tongs and plate it. I sprinkled a little grated parmesan and some few pine nuts over the pasta, though that’s not necessary. With salad and maybe a few bread sticks, dinner’s served, inside 15 minutes!

 

 
From time to time I’ll suggest other fast meals that can be whipped up by anyone. After all, when you’d rather be bicycling, hiking, or paddling, who has the time to spend all day cooking dinner? Instead, try some fast food, my way!

 
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