Easy One Pot Tomato Zucchini Penne for Dinner

With tender chunks of zucchini in a spicy Arrabbiata sauce, this easy delicious pasta is the perfect one-pot meal for a busy weeknight dinner. Instead of boiling the pasta and making the sauce separately, they're cooked together saving time, energy, and water.

First, some zucchini, onions and garlic are sauteed to bring out their flavors and sweetness. Then a can of tomatoes, water, penne and the seasonings go in and get cooked together until the pasta is cooked through. That's all there is to it! Because the penne cooks in the sauce, the pasta is literally filled with the sauce, and the starch from the pasta gives the sauce the perfect pasta coating consistency.

Anchovies are a great way to add some umami to a pasta sauce, which is why I normally add them to my Arrabbiata, but to make this vegan-friendly, I've substituted soy sauce, which makes for a good substitute. That's because soy sauce contains loads of umami boosting amino acids which work in tandem with the glutamates in the tomatoes to stimulate the umami receptors on your tongue.

While this makes for a delectably light pasta on its own, if you're not vegan, crumbling some gorgonzola on top adds both richness and depth to this penne turning it into a vegetarian dish that even a meat-lover will enjoy.