This Easy Sausage Pasta is one of my go to busy night dinner recipes. With just a handful of simple ingredients, this easy sausage pasta can be on the table in no time. This is a great recipe to keep on hand for those nights when you might not have planned ahead. If you wondering what to make for dinner, put this Easy Sausage Pasta on the menu tonight!
I adapted this recipe from my dear friend Mary Younkin’s cookbook, The Weekday Lunches & Breakfast Cookbook. Mary, who runs the website Barefeet In The Kitchen, can always be depended on for great recipes, and this is no exception.
With a few modifications (which in my house means omitting ingredients) my picky eaters absolutely gobble this Easy Sausage Pasta right up. While this may not be the most photogenic meal, I promise you it’s ridiculously delicious!
EASY SAUSAGE PASTA
What ingredients do you need to make sausage pasta? For this recipe, not a whole lot! Here’s what you’ll need to whip this up for dinner.
- Pasta such as penne, mini farfalle or rotini
- Sausage – I use Jimmy Dean Regular Pork Sausage (yes, breakfast sausage)
- Heavy Cream
- Optional – cajun spices, garlic, stewed tomatoes, green bell pepper
My kids, and to some extent myself, tend to prefer our foods fairly simple when it comes to ingredients. We find this sausage pasta recipe absolutely delicious with minimal ingredients.
That said, you can easily add cajun spices to kick up the heat more, garlic for another layer of flavor and stewed tomatoes or green bell peppers. If your family enjoys those flavors, by all means, add them in!
But I guarantee you will still have a delicious, flavor packed meal without them.
How do you make sausage pasta?
This truly is EASY sausage pasta! There are only a few simple steps to make this recipe.
- Cook pasta
- Cook sausage
- Cook sauce
- Combine all ingredients
The sauce for this recipe is not really a thick cream sauce, it more just nicely coats the pasta.
If however you would like yours a bit creamier, feel free to add an additional 1/2 cup+ of heavy cream. Let’s make some Easy Sausage Pasta.
If you love this recipe, then don’t miss my easy Biscuits and Sausage Gravy recipe, Breakfast Sliders and my Tater Tot Breakfast Casserole, which also uses breakfast sausage. I think you’ll also enjoy my Pizza Casserole, which combines pasta, sausage and pepperoni all in one easy dish!
Easy Sausage Pasta
Ingredients
- 8 oz penne pasta
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 pound sausage Jimmy Dean regular pork sausage recommended
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Instructions
- Add 2 tsp salt to a large pot of water and bring to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions for al dente pasta.
- In a separate large pan over medium-high heat, cook sausage throughly. If adding garlic or green chopped green peppers, they can be added with sausage at this time.
- Prior to draining pasta, scoop out approximately 1/2 cup of pasta water and set aside.
- Once sausage is completely cooked, use a slotted spoon to transfer to a plate.
- Return the hot skillet to the stovetop, still on medium-high heat, and pour 1/2 cup of pasta water into pan to deglaze the hot pan. Use a spatula to really scrape any brown bits off the bottom of the pan so that they combine with the pasta water. Reduce heat to medium and add in heavy cream. If using additional ingredients, they can be added at this time. Reduce heat to medium and let sauce simmer for 3-5 minutes to thicken. Keep a close eye on it and stir often to avoid burning.
- Once sauce has thickened, drained pasta can be added to the sauce. Stir well to combine and evenly coat the pasta. Add in sausage and stir well to combine.
- Serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
Disclaimer
Nutrition information is estimated as a courtesy. If using for medical purposes, please verify information using your own nutritional calculator. Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
CLICK TO PIN THIS RECIPE TO SAVE
I hope your family enjoys this EASY SAUSAGE PASTA recipe as much as mine does!
SuperStarSas says
Honestly I see this as a great base for a meal. If it’s all you have on hand, it will be totally sufficient. To add a little flare, I added the garlic when starting the sausage, then added chopped green peppers when there was maybe 1-2 minutes left (so they would stay a little crunchy). Instead of pasta water I used chicken broth, then added a little squirt of lemon juice and some shaved parmesan to the sauce towards the end. Rich, a little salty (using the salted pasta water was too salty for me), and SO GOOD. I found my sauce cooked down a little in 5-8 minutes, but I had to add back the sausage to get it to really thicken up.
Tracy Bernhardt says
I made this recently. My husband and I really like it! I used cream cheese and chicken broth instead of heavy cream. Comfort food ❤️
Anonymous says
I used to have cream all the time, certain situations have me not always having it on hand $,
anyway 8m a bit confused that your recipe calls for pasta water and thick cream to get where u want it, but your quick to shoot down anyone’s suggestion of using milk, I DO understand theyre not the same, but why can’t “we” skip water and maybe incorporate a bit more fat and some flour earlier in process, and then simmer down some milk ??
Christi Johnstone says
The sauce for this basically is just the cream. So if you use milk in it’s place, it’s not going to make much of a sauce. You could try a roux, but I would definitely add some seasoning or it will likely be pretty bland. I have not tried that though. And the water is used to deglaze the pan, something I don’t think you’d want to do with milk due to the likelihood it would scald.
Sandy says
I added garlic, onion, green pepper, celery, rotel tomatoes w/ green chiles, used half & half and plain skyr for sauce. Needed a little seasoning. Cut back a bit on pasta qty. Good dish to whip up quickly!
Michelle says
I had sat out some sausage that I was going to use for breakfast that didn’t get used so needed an ideal to make with it for dinner so tried it and lived it easy enough for my daughter to make we didn’t have any crushed tomatoes so I threw in a can of Rotel with hatch chili’s
Sharon says
I had a friend over and we ate this and loved it. I know she complimented how great it tasted at least half a dozen times. I did not expect this to be that good but it really was and so easy to make.
Sophie Brennan Carlisle says
This is a solid family meal. My teens went back for seconds. I added the garlic and bell pepper. Otherwise, followed the recipe exactly. Easy, easy dinner win. Thank you!
kimberly says
I added red peppers and baby kale, poof! It’s a meal in a bowl. Perfect. Thank you!
Amanda says
This was a simple and quick recipe. We didn’t have any heavy cream so we used favorite alfredo sauce. It was divine. And my husband added a ton of cajun seasoning to his.
Chandra says
Not gonna lie; I didn’t expect much from this recipe. But then, I didn’t want much; I’d planned a get-together with friends that had to be canceled, and I was looking for a way to use up ingredients I’d purchased (to make us hors-d’oeuvres) on actual DINNER for my family. And this recipe helped use up the heavy cream, the sausage, and the freshly-grated parmesan cheese (which the recipe doesn’t call for OR NEED, but it was a nice topping).
So when everyone came down for dinner and was like, “What did you make?” I offered all sorts of caveats about how I only made it to use up some stuff, so it might not be all that great (sure, it gets good reviews, but I’ve been fooled by those before).
It was DELISH! I did not expect this to be much more than convenient and edible (based, I think, on the simplicity of the recipe), but we all really enjoyed it! And now I’ll actually PLAN to make it in the future. 🙂