Healthy Italian Beef Recipes

This easy slow cooker ground beef and pasta recipe makes a great meal any night of the week.

Instead of opening a jar of sauce, try this easy spaghetti with meat sauce on a weeknight. Serve with steamed broccoli and garlic bread. The recipe makes enough for 8 servings. If you're serving only four for dinner, cook 8 ounces of spaghetti and freeze the leftover sauce.

The meatballs and sauce are cooked in the slow cooker for this traditional Italian spaghetti and meatballs recipe. You could also serve the meatballs over creamy polenta or on a sandwich with melted provolone.

Who doesn't love pasta with a quick meat sauce? This crowd-pleasing healthy spaghetti Bolognese recipe is a boon for busy cooks--it's ready and on the table in just 40 minutes.

This is a version of the famous meat sauce of Emilia Romagna, of which Bologna is the capital. Giuliano Hazan's family is from Emilia Romagna, and he learned to make Bolognese sauce from his mother, Marcella, who learned it from her grandmother, Mary. Its classic pairing is with homemade tagliatelle or pappardelle but it's also very good with rigatoni, shells or any substantial pasta shape, preferably one with ridges, that has nooks and cavities to trap the sauce. Adapted from How to Cook Italian by Giuliano Hazan; Scribner, 2005.

A touch of cinnamon distinguishes these delicious tomato-sauced meatballs. Adding whole-grain bulgur allows you to use less meat, resulting in meatballs with less than half the total fat and saturated fat of the original. Plus a vibrant-tasting combination of fresh and canned tomatoes in the sauce helps reduce the sodium by two-thirds. Serve with pasta, polenta or even on a whole-grain roll with a bit of melted part-skim mozzarella for a meatball sub.

The economical cube steak is elevated to new heights in this recipe. The salad, with chopped arugula, basil, tomatoes, onion and sharp Italian cheese, is the picture of summer simplicity; all it needs is olive oil and lemon to dress it.

Braising is an excellent way to tenderize an inexpensive cut of meat like top round--and create a rich-tasting sauce. Embellished with mushrooms, colorful bell peppers and a dollop of low-fat sour cream, it becomes downright luxurious. Try serving this over barley instead or whole-wheat egg noodles.

This dish is elegant enough for company, yet easy enough to serve on a weeknight. Chicken or turkey cutlets could easily substitute for the veal, if you like.

To stretch the ground beef, we use high-fiber bulgur and whole-wheat breadcrumbs in the meatballs, which are baked rather than fried.

Our version of beef Stroganoff tops seared flank steak with a rich-tasting sauce made with a touch of cognac, reduced-fat sour cream and plenty of portobello mushrooms. Serve over whole-wheat egg noodles.

You can't go wrong with these classic marinara meatballs filled with applesauce, zucchini, and green onions.