Meghan Markle's Viral One-Pot Pasta Recipe

When I heard about her show With Love, Meghan and how her pasta recipe was taking over the internet, I had to watch the first episode and make the dish for myself! As a pasta lover with about 50 pasta recipes on my site, her concept checked all the boxes for what appeals to me:

• simple, one-pot pasta dish - ready in under 20 minutes
• loaded with vegetables - uses leafy greens that aren't always in other pasta recipes
• no-waste recipe - super creative how she incorporates the stems into the dish
• marketed as kid-friendly - I had to try it just for this!
• vegetarian - creamy from the pasta water and one easy swap to make vegan
• easy approachable dish - simple methods and not too much hands on time
• quick and easy cleanup - I will always have a special place in my heart for one-skillet/one-pot recipes

So, did it deliver on all these expectations? The short answer is yes, but with an asterisk. Following her recipe exactly wasn't quite a home run (for me, at least), but a few easy tweaks completely transformed the dish and brought out so much more flavor and texture!

I'm sharing her original recipe below and sprinkle in my own suggestions (and why). When following the recipe card, be sure to check the notes section at the bottom!

Ingredients

One thing I love about this dish is the ingredient list! I'm all about the fresh veggies and she certainly works in a ton. Here are a few suggestions on the ingredients:

• Cherry tomatoes: I like using the kind that are on the vine. Meghan slices them in half but I don't find this step necessary given the tomatoes will naturally burst while cooking. Skip the slicing and save time.
• Fresh garlic: I'm a garlic lover so I'm a little biased, but this dish needs more than just two cloves for the flavor to come out. I use an entire head! And if you have extra time I would recommend sautéing the garlic as the very first step.
• Swiss chard: Honestly, I'd omit it. It adds bitter flavor and alters the flavor of the entire dish. If you want Swiss chard, have it a different way but I do appreciate that she is leaning into these leafy greens and even making it no-waste by including the stems!

How to Make Meghan Markle's Pasta

The concept is essentially to pour boiling water over raw ingredients, cover and cook for six minutes, and then add the leafy greens to let them wilt gently without overcooking. I love this approach because overcooked greens can become bitter, lose their vibrant color and turn mushy.

1. Add the raw ingredients to a pot. I recommend using a non-toxic, non-stick 6-quart lidded low-rim pot as it needs to be wide enough to accommodate the uncooked spaghetti. The pot has to have a tightly fitted lid for the recipe to work!

2. Pour boiling water overtop. Meghan's innovative step of boiling the water from a tea kettle makes the recipe even more efficient. Boiling the water while prepping the veggies speeds the cooking process along because you are completing two steps at once.

3. Cover and cook for 6 minutes. By starting with boiling water, covering the pot immediately with the lid and turning on the burner, everything cooks a bit faster.

4. Uncover and add the leafy greens. These don't need to cook long as you don't want them to wilt. Let the pasta water continue to boil as it cooks uncovered - it leaves behind the starchy pasta water to keep this dish naturally saucy.

5. Serve! In the episode, Meghan says to either serve it straight out of the skillet with two forks for a romantic one-plate dish, or to serve it up like a fancy restaurant would by using a ladle to spoon into a shallow bowl and then twirling the pasta and placing it in the center. She then adds fresh basil, freshly grated parmesan cheese (I use vegan) and red pepper flakes. She also finishes the plated dish with extra salt and pepper.

Common Criticisms of Meghan's Recipe and How to Overcome Them

Criticism: "There's no protein!"

How to overcome it: I agree, but adding protein is actually pretty easy. I use quinoa pasta (you can also use chickpea pasta), as the pasta of choice can greatly impact the overall nutritional value of the dish! I also recommend adding canned black lentils or canned chickpeas - these are easy, pre-cooked additions that take no extra time to add. One more way to add protein is with this vegan cashew-based heavy cream at the end - it'll give the dish more creaminess too!

Criticism: "There's too much chopping."

How to overcome it: Yes, the recipe involves chopping but I wouldn't knock it just for that. To streamline this, you can skip halving the tomatoes and allow them to burst (like in this burst tomato pasta). Additionally, you can swap the Swiss chard and kale for pre-washed baby spinach to save time and just toss that directly into the pot!