Orecchitte Sausage Pasta with Creamy Tomato Sauce

4 min readFeb 28, 2022

….I liked cooking the sausages twice for this pasta dish. The classic Italian combination of sausage and peperoncini creates a satisfying and easy weeknight meal when combined with pasta. Kale is a fantastic nutritious addition that adds texture and cooks quickly, or you can have add broccoli if you want a thicker vegetable. Mild Italian pork sausage is used here, but there’s no need to feel tied to the recipe(you can use spicy Italian sausages, chicken apple sausage, breakfast sausage). Be sure to pick a pasta that can hold this hefty sauce. The flavor is good as the sauce seeps into the orecchiette pasta. Today I stir fried them until the moisture is gone, so the texture was a little chewy at my husband’s request.

Servings: 4–5

Times: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

400 g(14 oz) orecchiette pasta
1 Ts olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
500 g(1 lb) Italian pork sausages, meat squeezed out of their casings if using link sausages
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup tomato purée
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup parmesan
1 ts thyme, rosemary, minced
5–6 peperoncini (this is optional)
1/4 ts sea salt
black pepper to taste
4–5 cup kale leaves, torn into bite size pieces
parmesan for serving

Cooking Instructions:

Heat a pan with medium heat and add the olive oil into the pan.

2. Add the garlic into the pan to stir it for 30 seconds.

3. Add the sausage into the pan to break it up as you go until golden brown for 4- 5 minutes(until moisture is gone).

4. Add the white wine and stir enough to fly away the alcohol for 3–4 minutes.

5. Add the tomato purée, heavy cream, milk, parmesan, peperoncini(this is optional), salt, black pepper, and herbs into the pan.

6. Heat down to medium low heat to simmer them until thickened. Set aside.

7. Heat a pot with medium heat and add 5 cup water into the pot to boil. After boiling, add the pasta into the pot for 6–8 minutes(before draining save 1 cup of pasta cooking water and set aside).