If you’ve ever watched the Rachel Ray show “30 Minute Meals”, you know that many of her recipes can easily be modified to be gluten-free. There have been a few I’ve seen that are gluten-free without modifications and Rachel often mentions she uses a gluten-free chicken, beef or vegetable stock in her dishes. I think her new Stock-in-a-box products are labeled gluten-free but haven’t verified that yet since I have never seen them and the information doesn’t seem to be on the Rachel Ray website.
The other night, I realized I was overstocked on Italian red sauce, Classic Four Cheese in particular, as it was on sale at Super Target for less than $2 a jar recently. I also came across half a box of Ancient Harvest elbow pasta in the pantry and had ground turkey in the fridge. My dinner experiment didn’t begin as an effort to create a 30-minute meal – it just ended up turning out that way.
I browned the pound of ground turkey and added a little Alchemy Spice Italian Blend seasoning and kosher salt to it. While the meat was cooking, I boiled water for the pasta and cooked it for about 10 minutes as I like it more done than it gets when following the instructions on the box. When the pasta was ready, I drained it and set it aside. When the turkey was cooked through, I added most of the jar of Classico pasta sauce to it. Then I dumped the pasta into the skillet and stirred everything together and cooked for another five minutes.
The whole dish took about 25 minutes to make from start to finish. It wasn’t really a complete meal so I made green beans and a salad to round things out. The meat and pasta dish was unusually good considering I made it on the fly and we’d never tried that flavor of pasta sauce before. In fact, the Four Cheese is without question the best I’ve sampled from the Classico line. Any gluten-free pasta sauce can be used in this dish or you could make sauce from scratch, of course.
According to the company’s website, all of the red and white pasta sauces from Classico are presently gluten-free and are labeled as such. There is even a $1 off coupon you can download and print on the website right now. They retail for around $2 (or slightly more) here so using a coupon gives you about ½ off the regular retail price. Personally, I don’t download coupons from companies that ask for personal information in order to do so. Luckily, the Classico sauces are very reasonably priced and are sometimes offered at Publix on their 2-for-1 deal.
We love the Classico Four Cheese sauce!! Great, quick meal!
Thanks, Kim! I should have mentioned that we also use the Classico pesto sauce at times, but for the red pasta sauces, the Four Cheese flavor is a cut above the rest in the line-up 😉
Thanks Tiffany, I love quick (and gluten-free) meals. I will have to try this one. I also appreciate you contacting Classico. The other day I contacted Campbell’s and learned that Prego sauces are gluten free. Maybe you already knew this but I found out that they have separate vegetable plants that are gluten free and process products such as Prego Sauces, V-8 drinks and Pace salsas. The soup products are in a different facility and are NOT considered gluten-free!
Hi Brooke – After finding out that Campbell’s has gluten-free soups in Canada that they don’t offer here, I decided to make an effort to not buy any of their products, including the sauces. The entire gf list can be found on the campbellswithoutgluten.com website, which I’ve written about several times. I do my best to support companies that seem to care about our business and Campbell’s does not fit that profile 😉
Thanks for the feedback Tiffany! I am learning so much about companies that produce gluten-free foods and the drastic differences in their policies. When I was first diagnosed with celiac disease my primary focus was just finding “safe” gluten-free foods. Now I am trying to find companies that also truly support our gluten-free community. I appreciate the info and because I am new to this site, I will try to look at your older articles as well.