Slow Cooker Ground Pork Noodles

This Slow Cooker ground pork noodle dish is pure weeknight comfort — just four ingredients, mostly hands-off, and it comes together with a rich, dark, glossy sauce that coats every single noodle. Set it up in the morning and dinner practically makes itself.

Why You’ll Love This

Only 4 ingredients — ground pork, egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, and beef broth. That’s it.
The Slow Cooker does the work — a few minutes of browning on the stove, then walk away for hours.
Rich, savory sauce — the long cook time gives the sauce a deep, dark color and flavor you wouldn’t expect from something this simple.
Budget-friendly and filling — one pound of pork stretched into four solid servings.
Easy to customize — works with turkey, Chicken broth, extra noodles, or a spoonful of sour cream stirred in at the end.

About the Ingredients

Ground pork — I use regular, not lean. The fat is where the flavor is, and you’re going to drain most of it off anyway, so don’t pay extra for something leaner. The stuff from the big tube at the grocery store works just fine, which is what I usually grab.
Cream of mushroom soup — The condensed kind, not the ready-to-eat. I know some people have Feelings about canned cream of mushroom soup. I am not one of those people. It’s a workhorse ingredient and it does its job. I use the regular store brand most of the time. I’ve tried the reduced sodium version and it’s fine but the sauce ends up tasting a little thin to me.
Beef broth — This is where you get that dark, savory color. I’ve made it with chicken broth when that’s all I had, and it’s still good, just… paler. Almost a different dish. The beef broth version is the right one, as far as I’m concerned.
Wide egg noodles — I always buy the wide ones. They hold up to the sauce better and they have more surface area to get coated. The medium ones kind of disappear. I’ve tried regular pasta in a pinch — rotini, once — and it worked okay but it felt wrong.

Ingredients

1 pound ground pork (not lean)
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup
2 cups beef broth
8 ounces wide egg noodles — about 4 cups dry, give or take

Let’s Make It

Start on the stove. You need a big skillet, and you need it hot — medium-high heat. Add your ground pork and just leave it alone for a minute or two before you start breaking it up. You want actual browning here, not just gray cooked meat. Let some bits get a little dark on the bottom. That’s flavor.
Once it’s well browned and no pink remains — this takes me about eight or ten minutes, sometimes longer if my skillet is crowded — drain off most of the fat. I tilt the pan and spoon it out, or I’ll pour it carefully into an old can I keep by the stove. Leave just a little bit in the pan, not much. Then scrape all of that pork, every last browned bit, into the Slow Cooker.
Whisk together the condensed soup and the broth in a bowl or a big measuring cup until it’s smooth — you don’t want big lumps of soup sitting in there. Pour it over the pork. Stir it around a little. Cover and cook on LOW for about three to four hours, or HIGH for an hour and a half to two. You’ll know it’s ready when it’s bubbling at the edges and it’s turned this beautiful deep brown. It smells incredible at this point, I’ll warn you, and you will be tempted to just eat it like a soup. Don’t. The noodles are worth waiting for.
About half an hour before you want to eat, dump the dry noodles right into the Slow Cooker. Stir them in and press them down so they’re mostly covered in liquid. Cover again, switch to HIGH if you weren’t already, and cook for twenty to thirty minutes, stirring once in the middle. The first time I made this I forgot to stir it and the top noodles got a little tough — not inedible, but not right. So stir it.
When the noodles are tender and the sauce has thickened up into something glossy and dark that clings to everything, you’re done. Taste it. Add a little salt and pepper if you want, keeping in mind that the soup and broth are both pretty salty already. Turn the slow cooker off and let it sit, covered, for five minutes before you serve it. That little rest makes a difference — the noodles settle into the sauce.

Variations

You can make this with ground turkey and add a little Worcestershire sauce — it’s good, though the sauce doesn’t get quite as dark. Stirring in a spoonful of sour cream at the end makes it creamier, which is a nice change if you want something a little richer.
If you want to stretch this to feed more people, you can add up to twelve ounces of noodles — just add an extra half cup of broth so there’s enough liquid. A handful of frozen peas right at the end adds a little color and makes it feel slightly more like a complete meal. They warm through in about two minutes.
One time I tried toasting the dry noodles in a pan before adding them to the slow cooker. Gave them this faint nutty flavor. It was nice, honestly — I do it sometimes when I have the energy, which isn’t always.

Leftovers

Refrigerate within a couple of hours. The noodles will keep absorbing the sauce overnight, so when you reheat it, add a splash of water or broth to loosen everything up. I heat leftovers on the stovetop over low heat, stirring often. The microwave works but the noodles get a little rubbery if you’re not careful.
It keeps for about three days in the fridge. I’ve never tested whether it freezes well because there’s never enough left.

This isn’t a recipe I’ve ever served to company — it’s too plain-looking, too humble. But for a weeknight when I’m running on fumes and the fridge isn’t giving me a lot to work with, it’s exactly right. I serve it with frozen peas or green beans on the side and a piece of bread if I have it. Sometimes just the pork noodles in a bowl, standing at the counter.