Spaghetti with Lentil & Tomato Sauce
Soy sauce in a tomato sauce sounds like a mistake until you taste it. That single tablespoon fills the same savory depth ground meat normally brings to a bolognese, bridging the gap between bright tomato acidity and the richness your palate expects from a pasta sauce.
Carrots and celery sautéed in olive oil, red onion and garlic stirred through tomato paste, diced tomatoes simmered down with Italian seasoning, and canned lentils folded in at the end. 24 grams of protein and 19 grams of fiber, entirely from plants, piled over whole wheat spaghetti in twenty minutes flat.
Ingredients
- spaghetti, whole wheat 3 ounces
- carrots 2
- celery 1 stalk
- red onion 0.5
- garlic 1 clove
- olive oil 1 tablespoon
- tomato paste 1 tablespoon
- diced tomatoes 7 ounces
- water 0.25 cup
- Italian seasoning 2 teaspoons
- soy sauce 1 tablespoon
- lentils, canned 4 ounces
Method
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Cook the spaghetti according to the package instructions.
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Dice the carrots and celery. Finely chop the onion and crush the garlic clove.
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Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the carrot and celery cubes. Sauté for 5 minutes until the vegetables soften. Add the onion, garlic and tomato paste and cook for 2 more minutes. Stir in the diced tomatoes, water, Italian seasoning and soy sauce and simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly. Lastly, stir in the lentils and heat for another 3 minutes.
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Serve the spaghetti topped with the sauce in a deep dish.
Rinse the canned lentils under cold water before stirring them in. It washes off the sodium-heavy canning liquid and keeps the finished sauce cleaner tasting.
Sautéing the carrots in olive oil is standard technique for building a soffritto, but research found it also multiplies what your body absorbs by more than six times. Raw carrots release about 11% of their beta-carotene. Sautéed in oil, that number jumps to 74%. Heat breaks apart the carrot's internal structure, and the fat dissolves the freed pigment for absorption.
British Journal of Nutrition, 2012 · DOIBehind this recipe
Is 91 grams of carbs in one meal too much if I'm trying to lose fat?
It depends on your total daily intake, not the single-meal number. Research pooling 5,192 participants across 32 controlled feeding studies found that at matched calories and adequate protein, swapping carbs for fat changed daily fat loss by just 16 grams. The carb count in this spaghetti is not what determines whether you lose or gain.
Read the full evidence reviewCan I eat this pasta for dinner and still lose weight?
A spaghetti dinner does not stall fat loss on its own. A controlled crossover study found that shifting the majority of daily carbs to the evening produced equal or slightly better fat loss compared to spreading them across the day. What matters is total daily calories and protein, not what time the pasta lands on the plate.
Read the full evidence reviewDoes the plant protein in this meal build muscle the same way meat does?
When total daily protein is matched, plant and animal protein produce equivalent muscle gains. A 12-week controlled training study comparing habitual vegans and omnivores, backed by a meta-analysis of 9 independent trials, found no significant difference in lean mass or strength. The 24 grams here come from lentils and whole wheat, which together supply all essential amino acids.
Read the full evidence review
