Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli
Pasta as a main course shouldn’t be overly complicated. As with most of these recipes, the goal is to spend time together in the kitchen, not scrubbing a million pots and pans. All you need to do is brown some high-quality sausage, saute vegetables in the same pan to pick up the fond, and then toss it all together with pasta and a little more olive oil (and butter for that “secret” restaurant finish.)
This recipe comes to us from our partner MeatCrafters. You can try our spices in their quality sausages and charcuterie.
This recipe comes to us from our partner MeatCrafters. You can try our spices in their quality sausages and charcuterie.
Preparation Instructions:
Boil a large pot of water with a few heaping tablespoons of salt. You’re shooting for the same salinity as seawater.
Peel the casings from the MeatCrafters Sweet Italian sausage.
Dice the broccoli florets into bite size pieces. We used frozen florets, but you can use any cruciferous vegetable. More traditionally, broccoli rabe is used, but this recipe works with Swiss chard, mustard greens, or even kale.
Heat a large pan over medium high heat and add a tablespoon of the olive oil to keep the sausage from burning initially.
Brown the MeatCrafters Sweet Italian sausage, breaking up into smaller pieces as it cooks through.
Once the sausage is completely cooked, set aside in a bowl.
Add another tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and lower the heat to medium.
Once the oil is up to temperature, add the broccoli, season with salt, pepper, fennel seed, red pepper flakes, granulated garlic, and black pepper.
Keep the broccoli moving, you don’t want it to burn or even brown, just to soften and cook through (or in the case of frozen veggies, thaw and cook off any water in the pan).
Boil the orecchiette to al dente, or just barely undercooked. The pasta will cook the rest of the way in the pan with the sausage and broccoli.
Once the broccoli is cooked, add it to the same bowl as the browned sausage.
Drain the pasta, saving a half cup of pasta water.
Add the last two tablespoons to the saute pan and toss the pasta, broccoli, and sausage together. If the pasta looks dry, add the pasta water back a tablespoon at a time.
Finally, mix in the two tablespoons of butter. Always finish pasta dishes with butter. It’s why pasta in restaurants always taste so good.
thespicehouse.com
Excellent and so easy to make. My only difference in prep was I added a little chicken broth while the broccoli was cooking and stirred in some fresh ricotta at the end. Delicious and everybody loved it.