Cooking crockpot meatball question

[MazdaUK]

Hi all! I've made meatballs in the crockpot a couple of times now, and the whole family love it, but Im having a with the pasta. The fiorst time I made it I didn't belive the pasta would cook, so i did it in a pan. The second time I put it in and didn't believe I didn't have to stir it, so when we came to eat it was kind of gluey and there was no loose sauce (still tasted good ). Yesterday I trusted the crocpot and put pasta on top without stirring. After an hour a lot was still a bit hard, so i stirred and left it a bit longer. Pasta wasn't quite as gluey, but still more stodgy than we really like (although again nothing left )

Should I give up and cook the pasta separately? I was using farfalle (bows) as my boys don't have the patience with spaghetti

 

[etoiles]

I've made this 'baked' crockpot pasta recipe from the Crockpot lady. It turned out pretty good, better than other experiences cooking pasta in the crockpot before. It doesn't have meatballs but I don't see why you couldn't just add them to there while it's cooking or cook them first in the crockpot and then add in the pasta ingredients. also, I'm sure the type of pasta could be exchanged for different shapes.

 

[MazdaUK]

I've done that before. Its vrey nice, but what I wnated was for there still to be runny sauce - otherwise its sort of lumpy lasagne IYSWIM

As pasta only takes a few minutes on the hob I might just do that in future