This Greek Spaghetti With Meat Sauce Is A Mediterranean-Diet Dream

Reported by MindBodyGreen.

Mediterranean diet discourse tends to skew abstract — eat more olive oil, prioritize plants, drink wine with intention — which is useful until you're standing in your kitchen at 7 p.m. with no plan. Consider this your plan. A Greek-style spaghetti with meat sauce pulls every principle the diet is known for into a single weeknight dinner that actually fills you up.

The recipe, from Kelly Jaggers' The Everything Mediterranean Instant Pot Cookbook and highlighted according to MindBodyGreen, builds its sauce around lean ground veal, olive oil, white wine, tomato sauce, and — the detail that makes it distinctly Greek — a cinnamon stick and two bay leaves simmered into the base. Those aromatics aren't decorative. Bay leaves and cinnamon are Mediterranean pantry staples that bring warmth and depth without adding sodium or saturated fat. The whole thing comes together in an Instant Pot in under 20 minutes of active cooking.

The Finishing Touch That Changes Everything

Jaggers calls for aged myzithra — a hard, salty Greek cheese — grated over the pasta before the sauce hits the bowl. If you can't source it, Parmesan is a perfectly acceptable substitute, but the myzithra is worth seeking out at a specialty grocery if you want the full effect. Either way, the cheese layer matters: it adds protein, richness, and the textural contrast that keeps this from eating like standard weeknight pasta.

Per serving — and this recipe makes five — you're looking at 550 calories, 22 grams of protein, 17 grams of fat, and 72 grams of carbohydrates. It's a genuinely satisfying macro split for a pasta dish. If you want to push the protein higher, the recipe suggests doubling the veal to a full pound or swapping in a high-protein pasta variety. Both work. The sauce is forgiving.

Pair it with red wine and actual people at your table, and you've essentially built the Mediterranean lifestyle in one meal — not because it's aspirational, but because that's just how the diet is designed to function: good ingredients, shared food, no performance required.

When a dietary pattern has decades of research behind it, eating it shouldn't feel complicated — and this recipe proves it doesn't have to.

Read the original at MindBodyGreen.