Creamy Sausage Rigatoni
This is a very simple sausage rigatoni recipe that I threw together while it was snowing and wanted to utilize what was in my pantry/freezer.
First thing you do is chop the onion, if you’re using it, add extra virgin olive oil to the pan, add onions and cook down the onions.
Next you’ll add the sausage to the pan. If you bought sausage in casting, remove the casting and then cook the sausage. (I doubled my sauce recipe because I wanted both sweet and hot sausage, also leaves me sauce to use with other dishes over the next few days.) I slowly break down my sausage as it cooking, to help brown and to make sure there is still some nice juicy pieces of sausage. Break into chunks with a wooden spatula, mix, break into smaller chunks, mix, break it up and just keep going as shown in the pictures. When the sausage is browned, add in chopped garlic and cook it for about 1-2 minutes. (You should go ahead and boil pasta water, and cook the rigatoni to al dente. Drain pasta, add olive oil to the pot, add in pasta, coat in olive oil and set aside for when you’re ready.)
Next you’ll be adding the pasta sauce. I usually keep a jar of Made With Organic Tomato Basil jar sauce in the pantry, add that to the sausage. If you prefer to use your own sauce, that’s fine. I also added, because I doubled the sauce, a can of tomato sauce. (Just plain no salt added tomato sauce. The organic sauce I use, Made With Organic Tomato Basil Sauce, has a very high spice and basil ratio so I didn’t want to over do it so I added just regular sauce). Set stove to Lo.
Now you have a choice, you may just simmer down your pasta sauce for a few minutes, about 5… or you may do as I did, if you have time, and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
When your pasta has simmer to your preference, add the cubed cream cheese over the sauce. Let the cream cheese sit there for a min or two and let it melt a bit. Slowly mix the sauce to fully melt the cream cheese. Let sauce simmer with cream cheese for 2-5 minutes.
If you made extra sauce like I did, add sauce to the cooked pasta in your pot, and coat that way. If you made exactly enough sauce and rigatoni, go ahead and add the rigatoni to the sauce. Coat pasta, serve with fresh chopped basil on top and sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese.
Ingredients
1 box Rigatoni pasta (Boil whatever amount of pasta you like from the box)
1 small onion, optional
1 large jar of Made With Organic Tomato Basil pasta sauce (Or any organic basil pasta sauce, or make you own sauce recipe.)
1 lb sweet/hot Italian sausage, feel free to use both like I did (1lb each)
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 8oz block of cream cheese (if doubling the sauce recipe I did, still only use 1 block)
fresh chopped basil
grated Parmesan cheese
