It might not be easy. to decide what to make for dinner, particularly if you don’t want to spend much time in the kitchen. We’ve all seen dinners that start with chopping an onion, despite their claims to be quick and simple. I apologize, but by “lazy meal,” I mean one that doesn’t use any knives.
I knew this three-ingredient pasta would quickly become a staple in my dinner repertoire when I saw it exploding on TikTok. TikTok user @ConsciousChris posted his three-ingredient recipe for what he dubbed a “lazy Trader Joe’s meal” in a now-viral video.
All you need for this dinner is pasta, cream cheese, and jarred pasta sauce—especially tomato basil-flavored pasta sauce. Although the creator of TikTok utilized Trader Joe’s products, you are free to use any brand you choose.
How to Prepare the 3-Ingredient Pasta on TikTok
The recipe is as simple as they come. To make a creamy sauce, just boil your pasta and then cook the spaghetti sauce and cream cheese together on the burner until the cream cheese has melted. The pasta and sauce are combined, and Parmesan cheese is optionally added.
It’s a simple way to manufacture anything akin to the pink sauce; TikTok users adore it. Traditionally, pink sauce, tomato, and cream sauce are made with chopped tomatoes, cream, sugar, butter, basil, and a few additional ingredients and spices. Notably, this copycat version can be prepared in under ten minutes, significantly faster than the traditional pink sauce, which requires less than thirty minutes.
Although it won’t produce the ideal pink sauce, cream cheese and canned pasta sauce will provide a similarly creamy sauce with an added cheesy taste.
This dish can be made with any type of pasta and any brand of ingredients. Rao’s Tomato Basil sauce, whipped cream cheese, and fusilli were the ingredients I used. I chose whipped because it’s lighter and melted into the sauce more quickly, making it a smoother consistency.
In the end, you could use whatever type of pasta, red sauce, or cream cheese that you happen to have on hand with this three-ingredient recipe. Even better than cream cheese is something like Boursin cheese.
After you cook this meal once, I guarantee you’ll find reasons to make it again and again. The options are amazing.
