Creamy Beef and Shells
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see our privacy policy for details.
A quick/easy ground beef recipe, this is a pasta dish that will be on your dinner table all week long! So creamy and so comforting!
Featured Comment
I cannot even begin to tell you how much of this pasta I ate on probably 13 different occasions.
Well, first, I should tell you that no plating of any kind was involved here.
Nope. This is clearly a straight-out-of-the-skillet type dinner. Just grab your fork and dig right in.
All that cream sauce. All that pasta, just collecting that creaminess. And the perfectly crumbled ground beef, again, soaking up every last drop of that creamy, heavenly goodness.
Ugh, I can’t even talk about this anymore because now I need to make this for dinner. Again. For the 14th time.
Tools For This Recipe
Large cast iron skillet
Creamy Beef and Shells: Frequently Asked Questions
Not at all! Ground pork or ground turkey can be used instead of ground beef.
Tomato sauce, in the US, is tomato puree typically cooked down for a thick, smooth consistency with a relatively sweet flavor. Passata is simply uncooked tomato purée. You can use passata in place of tomato sauce, but it is not a completely equal substitute.
Heavy cream (or heavy whipping cream) has one of the highest fat contents with about 36-40% fat. Half and half or whole milk are suitable substitutes, but will yield a lighter result.
Yes! You can freeze the leftovers in individual freezer bags, thaw overnight, and reheat on the stovetop.
Creamy Beef and Shells
Ingredients
- 8 ounces medium pasta shells
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound ground beef
- ½ medium sweet onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 ½ teaspoons Italian seasoning
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups beef stock
- 1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce
- ¾ cup heavy cream
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 6 ounces shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese, about 1 1/2 cups
Equipment
Instructions
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well.
- Heat olive oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Add ground beef and cook until browned, about 3-5 minutes, making sure to crumble the beef as it cooks; drain excess fat. Set aside.
- Add onion to the skillet, and cook, stirring frequently, until translucent, about 2-3 minutes.
- Stir in garlic and Italian seasoning until fragrant, about 1 minute.
- Whisk in flour until lightly browned, about 1 minute.
- Gradually whisk in beef stock and tomato sauce. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until reduced and slightly thickened, about 6-8 minutes.
- Stir in pasta, beef and heavy cream until heated through, about 1-2 minutes; season with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir in cheese until melted, about 2 minutes.
- Serve immediately.
Did you make this recipe?
Tag @damn_delicious on Instagram and hashtag it #damndelicious!
Big fan of Damn Delicious but for some reason this missed the mark for me. Tasted a bit too acidic and had a lot of extra sauce. Thankfully I just spooned sauce into the hot pasta as needed otherwise it would have been swimming. I am confident that I can tweak this a bit to turn out a little creamier just surprised when I make a damn delicious recipe and it isn’t absolutely perfect. But tons of others loved it so this might just be the one outlier for our tastes. I’ll be sure to try again and let you know my thoughts!
I totally agree! Usually love damn delicious recipes but this one was definitely a miss. It had a lot of the canned tomato taste, so I tried to balance it out by adding a little sugar (which it helped a little). After a few bites though, the flavor became pretty one note. Maybe next time I’ll add some other spices to jazz it up!
So, I just made this for the second time and it was WAY better! Didn’t use any flour, cut in half the amount of tomato sauce and beef broth and kept the heavy cream about the same. I sauted the garlic and onion, then added in the beef (drained fat) added in the tomato sauce and brother and let it simmer for 30 mins. Spices I added while the meat was cooking was garlic salt, seasoned salt, pepper and hot paprikia. Then a good pinch of salt when cooking the tomato sauce. Added great extra sharp cabot cheese and we absolutely loved it. The super acidic tomato flavor was gone and it was the perfect amount of liquid to coat the pasta. This was a fantastic recipe but just really needed some tweaking for our tastes, but this is def going in the rotation so I am super glad I tried it a second time.
We love this recipe. I made it once with the Italian seasoning and it was awesome. The second time I substituted 1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika and 1/4 tsp ground chipotle powder for the Italian seasoning and it was a hit with the family. I have also successfully substitued blended cottage cheese for the cream and it worked well. Thanks for a very versitle and delicious recipe.
Great modifications!
Does anybody have any ideas on how well this might freeze in individual serving sizes? It’s the kind of recipe I would love to make a double batch of and stock my freezer with the rest.
How much sodium
Nutritional information is provided only for select and some new recipes at this time. However, if it is not available for a specific recipe, we recommend using free online resources at your discretion (you can Google “nutritional calculator”). Hope that helps!
We prepared this recipe tonight for supper. It is a good base for our taste, but next time I will cook the sauce for much longer before adding the cream and pasta.
This was a very nice meal.
Great simple recipe, i made substitutions because I don’t eat beef, I used ground turkey and chicken broth instead. I didn’t have onions or minced garlic I used onion and garlic powder and eliminated the heavy creame it was still very creamy and Good!
Great modifications!
Hi, I’ve been loving your recipes! I wanted to know if flour was necessary or if there was a sub I could use? My kids are allergic to wheat.
Thank you!
We, unfortunately, cannot give dietary advice when it comes to food allergies. As always, please use your best judgement when making substitutions and modifications.
This looks amazing! Do you use extra lean beef? Can you substitute for ground turkey or ground bison?
Yes and yes! 🙂
Chungah, I have to tell you this recipe is the bomb.com! It is soo good and so easy to make. I made it over the weekend and thankfully I put away a bowl of leftovers before my husband annihilated the rest of the pan. You hit it out of the park with this one!
Happy you enjoyed it!
Thank you for a beautiful creamy beef and shells recipe. Made this tonight for my family and the kitchen smells divine. It tastes even better.
Glad you and your family loved it!
This was so so creamy and delicious. It was super quick to make and just as good leftover. I don’t think I put a full 3/4 c of cream. I just stirred in until it looked right. Honestly, if you think the cream will not sit well with you it tastes great without too. (Yes I was tasting along the way). I’ll probably make it again this week.
Awesome!
Could you please add grams and celcius temperatures to your recipes ? it’s what we use in my country and it’s a lot of trouble trying to convert ingredients and temperatures. I love your recipes but most time I decide not to make them because converting is a lot of trouble for me !
Hi Mary! There are many free online calculators available online to convert cups to grams as well as fahrenheit to celsius. 🙂
Why serve immediately?
Because it is best served warm. 🙂
Well, you could serve it 2 mons. from now if you like. Make sure you sit it out on the counter the whole time! Come on, Martha the train is leaving the station!
Made this tonight for my picky eaters. They loved it!! It was so easy to make. The picture reminded me of hamburger helper, but I loved that it was all homemade and not from a box. It is definitely being added to our list of dinner options. Thank you for this recipe!
So great to hear!
How many servings does this make?
4.
I made this last night and it was absolutely delicious! I added Italian sausage and spinach, and it turned out very good! Thanks for the awesome recipe (and many others!)
That sounds so yummy!
Comfort food at its best! I had the worst, worst day today. TWO bowls later, I’m feeling much better! Now if only someone would do all my dishes!
My only change was to switch from shell pasta to “little ear” noodles because that’s what I had. I wish I could attach a picture here. The dish was really pretty.
That’s awesome, Kathleen! So happy it improved your crappy day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!
I went grocery shopping today and bought the ingredients I didn’t already have on hand to make this tomorrow night. I will substitute half & half for the heavy cream (less rich, but works just fine in every recipe calling for heavy cream that I’ve tried) and dried oregano and basil for the Italian seasoning as I don’t care for the rosemary in it. I am also going to saute some diced celery with the onion. Can’t wait to try it!
Let us know how it goes!
SO GOOD and So easy I made it between taking calls working from home!
Awesome!