Our journey to healthier eating is continuing. This week has been hard but only because I don't have a written meal plan. Seriously, the meal plan helped a ton last week, more than I really thought it would. The funny thing is that we didn't follow it to a tee, but just having meals written down, gave me a guide to follow.
This week, I didn't take the time to make a nightly meal plan and I am scrambling to figure out what to fix. The only thing that has saved us is that we still have plenty of healthy organic foods to choose from, so meals are pretty easy to whip together, even if I do have to stand in front of an open fridge door for five minutes! :-)
I was trying to decide what to make for supper last night when I saw a Tasty video. Have you seen these videos? They always seen to show up right when you are realizing how hungry you are. Then they take a recipe that you might not otherwise try, and show you how to make it in a couple of minutes long video. They make these recipes look so good and so easy! Thanks to these videos, anyone can be a chef!
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| One-Pan Sausage and Pasta |
The recipe video that caught my eye yesterday afternoon was for One-Pan Sausage and Pasta. I knew I had all the ingredients and thought it would be a perfect recipe to try. Plus it only takes 30 minutes from start to finish.
Ingredients:
Here are the ingredients for the dish:
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| The players for this meal, and that's white pepper in the container. |
Notice, that all my ingredients are organic. Yes we are still doing organic. There are two ingredients that are missing from the picture above. One is water and the other is garlic. The recipe called for 4 cloves of garlic and I forgot that I used all my garlic for my bone broth. I decided to just used garlic powder instead. Next time, real garlic cloves would be better.
The sausage the recipe called for was smoked andouille sausage, but I used sausage I purchased at Aldi. It is Kirkwood's Never Any! chicken sausage with tomatoes and basil. This sausage was perfect with this dish since it called for grape tomatoes and fresh basil. The sausage is fully cooked so I didn't have to worry about whether or not it was done, I just had to make sure and warm it through. Side note: I love the Never Any! line from Aldi. Their ham lunch meat is amazing and I can't wait to try the whole chicken that they now have available.
Making the Recipe:
To make the recipe, I sautéed the onions in olive oil first and sprinkled some garlic powder over them. Then I added in salt, then laid the spaghetti (a 1 pound box) in next, then continued with tomatoes, basil, and sausage. Once everything was in the pan, I added in 4 1/2 cups of water.
I let this come to a boil, turned down the heat to low, put a cover on the pan, and let simmer for 10 minutes.
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| Beautiful tomatoes, basil, and sausage. |
At this time, the recipe says that the water should be absorbed by the cooking spaghetti and the spaghetti should be at the al dente stage. Mine was not. I did need to cook it a little longer, but only a couple of minutes longer.
Then I added a little pepper (I used white pepper) and some Parmesan cheese and voilà!
The first thing I noticed was how much spaghetti was in the pan. That one pound box made a ton! Thankfully my parents came to supper last night, or we would be eating on this for days! Also it was a little void of flavor. I'm wondering if that was because of the switch in sausages.
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| Ready to cook. |
What I Loved About This Recipe:
I loved the ease of this recipe. I loved that I could cook everything in one pot. And I loved that it didn't take very long for me to cook! In fact during 12 minutes that I had to let it simmer, I was able to make a nice side salad to go with our meal.
What I Would Do Different:
I didn't care for all the pasta, so if I make this again, I would only use half of the one pound box. And then of course, I would need to decrease my water as well. I would try about 3 cups and see how that does. I would also add in more veggies. Some nice mushrooms and some colorful peppers would be amazing in this dish. I would also add in some Italian herbs to kick things up a notch.
Overall Rating:
I would rate this recipe a B+ with the way that I made it last night. Who knows it might have been better with the real garlic cloves and smoked andouille sausage. But I think the real problem for me was the excess pasta and lack of veggies. But of course that is my personal preference. Do I recommend it? Yes, it is a great recipe for the weeknight when you don't have a lot of time to cook and you want something good and this can rival take-out any day!
Funny, but I can't find the video from Tasty that I saw yesterday. However, I do know that they based their recipe from another site. So if you would like to get the recipe, I'm going to direct you there. Click here for the recipe.
Have you made any of these one pot pasta dishes? Let me know what you think in the comments below!
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