One-Skillet Italian Sausage Pasta
With the best of Italian flavors, this easy one-dish meal is hearty and filling. From browning the sausage to cooking the pasta, the entire dish is completed in under an hour.
Servings: 8 servings
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 pound Italian sausage, mild or spicy, casings removed if applicable
- 1 large onion, medium diced
- 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
- 4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly across clove
- 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning (I used The Spice Hunter®)
- 1 28 ounce can whole Italian plum tomatoes
- 3 cups chicken stock or broth
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 12 ounces pasta, torchietti, penne, ziti or rigatoni recommended
- 1 cup grated fresh Parmesan
- 1 1/4 cups grated mozzarella
- small handful of torn, fresh basil leaves for garnish
Special Equipment: 5 1/2 quart braiser OR large skillet with lid
Instructions
- Heat braiser or skillet over medium high heat. Add olive oil, then sausage. Cook sausage for 3 minutes, breaking up while cooking.
- Lower heat to medium low. Add onion and mushrooms; cooking and stirring for one minute. Stir in garlic and Italian seasoning. Cover skillet and continue to cook until onion is translucent. Stir periodically.
- Crush tomatoes well by hand or with a potato masher (watch out, the tomatoes will squirt when crushed). An immersion blender can also be used to break up tomatoes; simply pulse it a few times. Add tomatoes and juice to ingredients in pan. Stir to combine. Add chicken stock (or broth) and salt. Stir well.
- Raise heat to medium and bring to a boil. Add pasta; stir well. Cover skillet and cook until pasta is almost al dente, stirring frequently to keep pasta from sticking to bottom of skillet or clumping together.
- Turn off heat and remove pan from burner. Gently stir in grated Parmesan until melted. Scatter mozzarella evenly over top. Place lid over skillet and allow mozzarella to melt, 2-3 minutes. Sprinkle with torn basil leaves and serve immediately.
Notes
- Except for initially cooking the sausage, only cook this meal over medium or medium low heat. Cooking over higher heat will cause the ingredients to stick to the bottom of the pan and/or burn.
- Using whole tomatoes: It may seem counter intuitive to use whole Italian tomatoes and then crush them. There are several advantages in doing this:
- Italian plum tomatoes are more flavorful. The best Italian plum tomatoes are San Marzano. San Marzano is a variety of tomato, not a brand of tomato.
- You get to control the texture of the crushed tomatoes. There is more juice in the can of whole tomatoes which is needed in this particular recipe. The texture and amount of liquid is often unpredictable in canned, crushed tomatoes -- sometimes looking more like a thick tomato sauce and other times it can be thin and watery with a low amount of actual tomato. Additionally, with the canned crushed tomatoes, the tomatoes are often not the more flavorful Italian plum variety.