Sausage Pasta Skillet Dinner

This Italian Sausage Pasta Skillet Dinner is a comforting yet veggie-packed meal that is made from start to finish in JUST ONE SKILLET.

What are the go to weeknight meals in your home?

For my family, it looks like sheet pan dinners (either some combo of protein/veg/starch or sheet pan chicken curry) or a one skillet pasta like my skillet mac and cheese or one pan sausage and tortellini).

In any event, weeknights do NOT involve a lot of dishes. Cottage cheese lasagna and lamb bolognese is strictly a weekend project.

By the time the workday is over, and we get our daughter fed, bathed, read to and tucked in for the night, we are ready to eat our dinner, clean up as quickly as possible and then relax.

So one skillet meals with veggies built in like this Sausage Pasta Skillet Dinner are go tos for us.

How to make Sausage Pasta in one skillet:

While some pasta dishes (such as my popular salmon pasta and salmon pesto pasta) really work out best when you cook the pasta in a separate pot, this Italian sausage pasta recipe can be made start to finish in one pan.

No separate pot for cooking the noodles is necessary!

You’ll start by cooking red and yellow bell peppers (green peppers work here too; basically anything you’d use for fajita veggies or my shrimp fajita recipe), onion and garlic until they begin to get tender.

You will need a bowl to transfer these to, so I’m sorry about the one extra bowl.

You’ll use dry white wine to deglaze the pan at two separate points in the recipe. The wine adds brightness and acidity to the rich sausage dish, and also, like I said, deglazes the pan (gets all the yummy brown bits off the bottom).

Add the sausage to the pan and begin to brown it (more on that later). Then, you’ll be adding tomato sauce, chicken stock, oregano and dry, uncooked pasta to the skillet (I like mezzi rigatoni, which is also great in Greek lasagna).

Cover the skillet with a lid and cook it altogether until the pasta is tender! Just before serving, stir the vegetables back into the skillet to rewarm them.

How long should you cook ground sausage?

The Italian sausage I’ve used for this recipe is the kind that comes in a 1 pound roll (I used Bob Evans brand).

If you can only find Italian sausage in link form, that’s fine – just cut it out of the casing and crumble it into the skillet.

You’ll be cooking the sausage over medium-high heat, and using a spoon to break up and crumble the sausage as it cooks.

With any type of ground meat, you want to make sure that the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F for food safety reasons.

By the time the sausage cooks on it’s own for 5 minutes, plus 13 to 15 minutes longer once you add the liquids, it will definitely reach this temperature.

How do you spice up pasta?

Does your family love spicy food? My husband and I do, but since our daughter is just 1, she has a more mild palate.

If your family requires various spice levels like mine does, I’d recommend making the dish as written, and then sprinkling red pepper flakes on individual servings to add spice (I do this with fettuccine bolognese and lemon caper pasta as well).

If your whole family likes spice, you can make this dish with spicy or zesty hot Italian sausage in place of traditional Italian sausage.

What to serve with Italian sausage pasta:

There’s veggies built right into this pasta, but if you’d like even more, I’d suggest a simple green salad with citrus salad dressing (also a great pairing with savory oatmeal).

And how about a lemon and rosemary cocktail to drink and some stuffed baked apples for dessert?

More great pasta recipes:

• Garlicky Greek Yogurt Pasta with Sautéed Lentils & Chickpeas – great for Meatless Monday.
• Rigatoni Bolognese – a restaurant quality pasta right at home.
• Mushroom & Lentil Ragu – a hearty vegetarian sauce over spaghetti.
• Minestrone Pasta Sauté with Ricotta – perfect for a cold winter night.
• Butternut Squash Noodles – a healthier take on pasta.
• Garden Herb Shrimp Scampi Linguine from Half Baked Harvest
• Creamy Sun Dried Tomato Chicken Gnocchi from Jo Cooks