Pasta with Sausage and Peppers Recipe
A delicious all-in-one pasta dinner with veggies and protein mixed right in. This creamy sausage pasta is SO good.
Ingredients
- 16 ounces short pasta cooked to al dente with one cup of cooking water reserved
- 4 links spicy or mild italian sausage about one pound
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 jalapeno pepper thinly sliced
- 1 bell pepper any color, diced
- 1 small onion or half of a large onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1 large can crushed tomatoes or whole that you crush up....whatever
- ½ cup sour cream trust
- 2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
- salt and pepper
- parsley and parmesan cheese for serving
Instructions
- Bring a large skillet filled with about 3 inches of water to a boil. (alternatively, you can do this step before you boil the pasta and use the same water) Add the sausage links and boil for 5 minutes until about halfway cooked through.
- Remove the water from the skillet and preheat the same skillet to medium heat with the olive oil. Slice the par-cooked sausage links on a diagonal into 4-5 pieces each.
- Add the sliced sausage to the olive oil and crisp for about 3 minutes on each side until golden brown. Remove the seared sausage from the skillet.
- To the same skillet, add the onion and peppers to the sausage drippings with a sprinkle of salt. Stir to cook the veggies until they are soft and lightly brown at the edges. Add the garlic and stir into the peppers and onion for one minute.
- Add the canned tomatoes with another sprinkle of salt and a splash of the pasta cooking water. Stir to combine and reduce the heat to low. Let the sauce simmer for 10 minutes, tasting as you go for seasoning - the sauce should be very flavorful.
- When the sauce has simmered, add the pasta, sausage, sour cream, and parmesan to the skillet. Stir everything together, taste once more for seasoning, and serve! If the pasta seems dry, splash in a little more cooking water until you achieve a consistency that you like.
- Top with more parmesan and any fresh herbs you like right before serving. Enjoy!
Notes
Cooking the pasta: Be sure to cook your pasta in heavily salted boiling water, and drain it just shy of al dente so that it can cook for a minute in the sauce when you toss everything together.
Please consider using full fat sour cream. It adds so much to the flavor of the dish and is really lovely in this recipe.
If you are gluten free, use gluten free pasta OR turn this into a sausage and peppers over rice dish!
If you don't like or have sausage links, you can skip the boiling/browning step and use 1 pound bulk sausage, cooked and crumbled before you add the veggies and proceed with the recipe.
To make this not spicy, skip the jalapeno and use mild Italian sausage - it's still really good this way!
Use any pasta you like - I like a short pasta because it "matches" the sausage and veggie pieces, but any pasta is yummy!
If you don't have sour cream, heavy cream works great.
You can sub whole tomatoes for the crushed - just crush them with your hands as you add them to the sauce so they break up nicely.
Make this vegetarian by skipping the sausage and subbing a pint or two of sliced mushrooms - brown them at the beginning before adding the peppers and onions.
Tried this recipe?Let me know how it was!