This ridiculously simple sausage tomato pasta is so tasty I couldn't believe it until I made it myself.
I've seen variations of this floating around the internet. Jamie Oliver has made a version of it, among other people. But it wasn't until I saw Catalina Tre's gorgeous photo of her spicy sausage pasta that I felt truly motivated to take a crack.
Boy oh boy. Who knew that the combination of tomato and sausage and chicken stock could be this potent?!
Then again, if you look at that equation.
Tomato = nature's umami bomb
Sausage = full of seasonings = another umami bomb
Chicken stock = err, a milder umami bomb?
So it makes sense then, if you pull all of these ingredients together and brighten them with aromatics like garlic, the results should be pretty damn fantastic?
Best of all, this pasta requires only seven ingredients. Five, if you discount oil and water (which obviously have to be present in every recipe, duh).
As it's lockdown time, I didn't want to go out hunting for ingredients. So I made the already-simple recipe even simpler using ingredients I already had in the house.
How I made my simple five-ingredient sausage tomato pasta
1) Pasta - I used spaghetti, though bite-size ones like orecchiette, pasta shells or macaroni would be nice as they're the same size as your sausage slices.
2) Sausage - this is the main source of your flavours. The trick is to cut the sausages into slices. So that when you fry them in oil, they flavour the oil more effectively, given the extra surface area exposed. The sausage-flavoured oil then mixes with the juices from the tomato and chicken, producing a flavour-rich sauce that then coats your pasta ... yum-moh! If humble old Ayamas cheese sausage could produce such spectacular results, imagine what quality German or Viennese sausages would do!
3) Tomato - try to use cherry tomatoes, instead of big ones. The reason is, you want to slice them into halves and then add them to the pan, cut side down so that the juicy inner parts can infuse the oil. This adds so much flavour! Press down on them lightly with your spatula to squeeze out even more juice.
4) Chicken broth - ok. This is a bit of a luxury for Asian homes because we don't really keep or buy Asian stock. But I happened to have some on hand so I used it. Alternatively, you can just use water and add a bit more salt at the end.
5) Garlic - A must of course to season the oil! The best part? You don't have to even mince it. Just whack it with the back of the knife to remove the skins and dump the whole clove in to flavour the oil. That way, you can remove the whole cloves easily at the end. But you know we Asians love our garlic, so dumping it is sacrilegious. If anything, we fight for it haha!
You can of course add other aromatics like chilli, shallots, etc, and if you're feeling a little fancy, white wine.
You can also add healthy greens; I added a bunch of baby spinach at the end. The trick is to use something mild-tasting so it doesn't compete for attention with the rest of the ingredients.
Easy right? Pasta recipes don't get much simpler than this. And simplicity is exactly what we need during this COVID19 pandemic era.
For more delicious pasta recipes, try these!
Sausage Tomato Pasta
Equipment
- non-stick frying pan, chopping board
Ingredients
- 2 servings pasta
- 1/2-1 cup chicken stock
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- 2 sausages
- A handful cherry tomatoes
- Small bunch spinach
- Water
Instructions
- Prep your ingredients. Slice sausages. Crush garlic cloves and remove skins. Cut cherry tomatoes into half.
- Cook pasta as per instructions.
- Heat up olive oil in pan. Add your garlic and sausage slices. Panfry sausage slices until bottom is brown, then flip to cook other side.
- Now add the cherry tomatoes and cook until they soften. Press on the tops with your spatula to squeeze the juices out.
- Add 1/2 cup of chicken stock. Swivel pan so that the tomato juices and stock mix to form your sauce.
- You can add spinach at this point. By now your pasta should be ready. Add pasta to the pan and stir together to mix. If sauce is too thick, add more pasta water or stock.
- Check for seasoning. Serve!
