Welcome to this weeks recipe! This is a hybrid of good ole “hot dog spaghetti” that I used to love as a kid. I like it really spicy, but the level can be adjusted by using regular sausages (A polish kielbasa is a good choice) instead of hot links and taking out some of the red pepper that I add. But we all know I have a spice addiction so I put it all in!
Also for this recipe today, my four year old son helped me out. I like to include my kids when I cook as much as possible and it was fairly painless. I let him do things like pour ingredients in and stir, all with a very careful eye on him. He did a great job!
So into the recipe we go!
Ingredients:
Sausages (Hot links, polish kielbasa, any sausage you like!)
Onions
Bell Peppers (Any color you like)
Garlic
Tomato Sauce
Italian Seasoning
Oregano
Salt
Pepper
Crushed Red Pepper
Spaghetti Noodles (Or any pasta you choose)
Prep:
So for this recipe I used the frozen onions and peppers from my previous stir fry! It cut out a lot of prep time.
Chop up your sausage into bite size pieces. You can cut them as big as you want. You can keep them as thin circles, cut them in half, or even into quarters. It depends on what sort of taste and mouth feel you are going for. Experiment! I like all of the ways!
Open your tomato sauce cans.
I like doing this before hand so I don’t have to fiddle with it later when I just want to combine my ingredients. Some people may prefer to use a pre made jar sauce or even go straight from scratch with fresh tomatoes or whatever. However you like to make your base marinara sauce, this recipe can work with that too! Just add the meat and maybe the veggies and a few seasonings if you don’t already use them and voila!
Cooking:
Heat up a pan with a few tablespoons of cooking oil of choice. I don’t recommend peanut oil, but vegetable, canola, and olive oil work great here.
Saute meat until it is brown on both sides. I like mine to get a little crispy, but it’s up to you.
Remove meat from pan, but keep the oil inside! We will now saute our vegetables in this spicy flavored oil!
(Pardon my weird lighting. The sun was setting and I’m still working on getting curtains in my kitchen hee hee)
Since I used the frozen veggies without really defrosting them, it took a while for them to cook. I don’t recommend completely defrosting frozen vegetables because they get mushy and weird and might not seem suitable for cooking (in soups and sauces they are perfectly fine though, since they usually soften while simmering anyway).
If you use fresh vegetables, this should be fairly quick and you just want the onions to get translucent before you move to the next step.
When the veggies are ready, I add the meat back in and saute for a few minutes just to integrate the flavors. I also added my garlic at this step just to get it browned a little. I have a bad habit of scorching my garlic so I tend to add it last.
Next, turn the heat down and add in the tomato sauce and seasonings. I like to add about a can and a half of water to my sauce. I use the actual cans from the sauce so that I can rinse out the residual tomato left inside and get the consistency the way I like it.
My seasoning collection is a ragtag bunch!
Please season to taste. My version of sauce is very herbacious and zesty, so I like a good amount. You may prefer less, so you do you gurrrrrl. (or boyyyy. Whatever lol)
It is best to start out with what you consider a “minimal” amount of seasoning, let the sauce simmer, taste it, and add what you think it needs.
Once you’ve got all that mixed up you let that sauce go. My minimal simmer time is 30 minutes on medium, but if you have more time, you can do longer on low.
During this time I usually boil my water for the pasta and get anything else ready to go with, like a salad or bread.
Remember to stir it every now and then to make sure it’s not burning or anything. Also don’t forget to taste a few times as you go!
There are a few camps on how to do pasta. One is to add the boiled pasta to the sauce and mix it together. I like this method for lighter sauces and when I’m not using as much liquid in my sauce. To be honest, this recipe is almost like a sausage soup, if you added more water and maybe some different veggies and make it into a soup if you wanted.
Anyway, if I have a lot of sauce I don’t like to add the pasta and mix it directly, it just tastes weird.
The other camp is spooning the sauce over the top of the pasta… and that is what I normally do with this recipe.
And voila!
Delicious!
I also made a salad with some raspberry pomegranate dressing
It was delicious btw. I just added some fresh cut corn, cucumbers and tomatoes and some croutons to a spring mix salad. Yummo.
So there you have it! If you try this recipe let me know how it comes out and if you liked it 🙂