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This creamy ham pasta is creamy, salty, soft-edged comfort food with just five ingredients and hardly any fuss. The Slow Cooker does most of the work, then egg noodles and sour cream turn it into an easy, satisfying supper. You’re going to love how simple it is.
Why You’ll Love It
- Just five ingredients — everything is easy to find and simple to use.
- Hands-off Slow Cooker cooking — add the ham, soup, and broth, then let it cook.
- Fewer dishes — the egg noodles cook right in the creamy ham mixture.
- Feeds six nicely — green beans or a lettuce salad make easy sides.
Ingredient Notes
Cooked ham is the whole reason this recipe exists. Leftover ham works beautifully, but you can absolutely use a ham steak from the grocery store, chopped into bite-size chunks. Just keep in mind that some ham is saltier than others. If yours is especially salty—and you’ll know, because it practically announces itself—use low-sodium chicken broth.
For the cream of chicken soup, use the regular condensed kind. Nothing glamorous. Store brand, name brand, whatever was on sale—they all make dinner. Homemade cream soup would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?
Egg noodles are important here. Use the wide, dry egg noodles, not frozen noodles and not little elbow macaroni. The tender egg noodles give it that soft, almost old-country casserole feeling. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it does in my mouth.
And sour cream goes in at the end, after the heat is turned off. Don’t skip it. It gives the sauce that gentle tang and makes everything silky instead of merely beige—which, let’s face it, this meal already is. Delicious beige. But beige.
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked ham, cut into bite-size chunks—leftover ham is perfect, though I’ve used a thick ham steak in a pinch
- 2 cans (10.5 ounces each) cream of chicken soup
- 1 cup chicken broth, low-sodium if your ham is on the salty side
- 8 ounces uncooked egg noodles, the dry wide kind
- 1 cup sour cream, regular sour cream; I don’t fuss with the light version here
Instructions
Add the ham chunks to your Slow Cooker, then pour in both cans of cream of chicken soup and the chicken broth. Stir it gently until the ham is coated and the soup has loosened up a bit. It will look pale and somewhat unexciting at this point—don’t panic. A lot of worthwhile dinners begin looking like something you’d serve in a nursing-home cafeteria.
Cover the Slow Cooker and cook on low for 3 to 4 hours, until the ham is hot and the creamy mixture is bubbling around the edges. Slow cookers have their own personalities, and some run hotter than others.
Stir in the uncooked egg noodles, pressing them down into the hot liquid as best you can. They do not all have to be perfectly submerged immediately, but give them a good tuck under there. Cover again and cook on high for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring once if needed, until the noodles are tender. Start checking at 20 minutes. Mushy noodles are not ideal.
Turn off the slow cooker once the noodles are tender, then stir in the sour cream until the sauce is smooth and creamy. Let the pasta sit for about 5 minutes before serving so the sauce can thicken slightly. This is the hardest part, but five minutes will not kill them. Probably.
Spoon the creamy ham pasta into bowls and serve it hot. Serve with buttered green beans beside it, or sweet peas if there is a bag in the freezer. A simple lettuce salad helps, too, especially if you’re trying to pretend we are balanced people.
Variations
If you have frozen peas, stir in about a cup during the last 10 minutes of cooking. They add a little sweetness and, more importantly, a bit of green so the bowl doesn’t look like it came entirely from the tan section of the paint store.
Shredded cheddar can be added with the sour cream. A handful, maybe a little more. The cheddar makes the sauce richer and a little more indulgent.
Avoid adding broccoli early in the cooking time. It can go soft and sad and color the sauce in a way that is hard to fix. Add peas if you want a vegetable here. They behave themselves.
If the noodles soak up more liquid than expected, stir in a splash of warm chicken broth at the end. Not too much—you want creamy pasta, not soup. Although on a cold night, I wouldn’t complain terribly.
Storage & Reheating
Leftovers keep in the refrigerator for about 3 days in a covered container. The noodles will continue soaking up the sauce, so it gets thicker by the next day. That’s normal. It may even look a little stiff and gloppy when you first pull it out, but a splash of chicken broth fixes most of life’s small casserole problems.
Reheat individual portions in the microwave, covered loosely, stirring halfway through. Or warm it gently in a saucepan over low heat with a little broth stirred in. Don’t blast it over high heat unless you enjoy cleaning creamy sauce off the underside of a microwave plate.
Final Notes
This is not a dinner for impressing anyone. It is a dinner for getting the table settled while the windows are dark and the day has wrung you out a little. Maybe there’s bread. Maybe there’s a bagged salad forgotten in the refrigerator until the very last second. Maybe the kitchen is still a mess from breakfast, because apparently dishes reproduce when the lights are off.
Leftover ham works especially well, when the house has finally gone quiet again. The good plates are back in the cabinet, there’s one stray ribbon under the sofa, and there are containers of food waiting in the refrigerator. Then this comes along and makes that ham feel useful again.
Funny how a plain bowl of creamy noodles can do that. Make things feel less like leftovers and more like supper.
Slow Cooker 5-Ingredient Amish Cream of Chicken Ham Pasta
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked ham cut into bite-size chunks; leftover ham or a thick ham steak works well
- 2 cans cream of chicken soup 10.5 ounces each; use regular condensed soup
- 1 cup chicken broth use low-sodium broth if the ham is especially salty
- 8 ounces uncooked egg noodles use dry wide egg noodles
- 1 cup sour cream regular sour cream
Instructions
- Add the ham chunks to the slow cooker, then pour in both cans of cream of chicken soup and the chicken broth.
- Stir gently until the ham is coated and the soup has loosened up.
- Cover the slow cooker and cook on low for 3 to 4 hours, until the ham is hot and the creamy mixture is bubbling around the edges.
- Stir in the uncooked egg noodles, pressing them down into the hot liquid as best you can.
- Cover again and cook on high for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring once if needed, until the noodles are tender; start checking at 20 minutes.
- Turn off the slow cooker, stir in the sour cream until the sauce is smooth and creamy, and let the pasta sit for about 5 minutes so the sauce can thicken slightly.
- Spoon the creamy ham pasta into bowls and serve hot with buttered green beans, sweet peas, or a simple lettuce salad if desired.