Pesto Pasta With Sausage and Tomatoes That Tastes Like You Tried

It is 6:50 on a weeknight and the jar of pesto has been looking at you since Thursday. This pesto pasta with sausage is 20 minutes with a skillet, a pot and a colander, and it has the look of a dinner that took some thought. Browned sausage, burst tomatoes, a green slick of basil: it makes a good impression and does not ask how little you did.

The pasta water does the talking: add it slowly and the pesto turns from a spoonful into a sauce.

The recipe is a pound of penne, a pound of Italian sausage, half a cup of pesto, a pint of cherry tomatoes and a little parmesan on top. While the pasta boils, the sausage browns, the tomatoes soften in the same pan, and everything meets in the pot at the end. It is one of those dinners where the order of things matters more than the skill.

How to make it

1. Halve the 1 pint cherry tomatoes, about 2 minutes.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the 1 lb penne until al dente. Reserve 1 cup pasta water, then drain.
3. Remove the 1 lb Italian sausage from casings and brown in a skillet over medium heat, breaking into pieces, about 8 minutes.
4. Add the halved cherry tomatoes and cook 3 minutes until softened.
5. Toss the drained penne with the sausage mixture and the 0.5 cups pesto sauce, adding reserved pasta water as needed for consistency.
6. Top with the 0.25 cup grated parmesan and season with salt and black pepper.

Notes

Cooked leftovers keep three to four days refrigerated, per USDA FSIS. Pesto pasta with sausage tightens up as it sits, because the pasta keeps absorbing the sauce, so reheat it with a splash of water and stir it over low heat. It is not at its best cold, but it is a fine day-two lunch at room temperature.

It freezes fine if you need it to, though the pasta is a little softer after thawing. Thaw it in the fridge overnight and reheat it in a skillet with a splash of water.

Pesto is a raw sauce, so pesto pasta with sausage works best when it goes in at the end, tossed through the hot pasta and sausage, not simmered. Cooking it hard dulls the basil and the color, while tossing it through gently keeps it bright. The heat of the pasta is enough.

Sausage removed from its casing is ground meat, so cook it until it reaches 160 F inside, the USDA safe minimum for ground meat. Eight minutes in a medium-heat skillet, broken into small pieces, usually gets it there, but a thermometer in the thickest clump settles the question.

The halved cherry tomatoes get three minutes in the sausage pan. They should slump and soften but hold their shape, and their juice, mixed with the sausage fat, is part of the sauce.

On SwipeCart, this is a swipe-right for the night you want pasta to carry some weight. Your agent adds the penne, the sausage, the pesto and the tomatoes, and your only job is to boil the water before you change your mind.

Swaps that actually work

The pesto and the sausage are the point. The pesto is the sauce and the sausage is the salt and the fat that seasons everything, so a swap for either changes the dish.

Penne can be any short pasta with a bit of texture. Rotini, fusilli, farfalle and rigatoni all catch the sauce. Long pasta works too, though the sausage pieces fall out of it.

Italian sausage can be sweet or hot, and the choice decides the whole mood. Sweet leaves the pesto in charge; hot makes the plate louder. Chicken sausage works too, and it browns faster and with less fat in the pan, so you may want a drizzle of oil. If you want a vegetarian version, skip the sausage and add a can of drained white beans with the tomatoes.

Pesto can be jarred or homemade, and the choice is yours. Jarred is fine and is what the recipe expects. If it is a thick one, you will need more pasta water to loosen it.

In this pesto pasta with sausage, cherry tomatoes can be grape tomatoes, and a handful of baby spinach stirred in at the end wilts in seconds and adds some green. Toasted pine nuts on top make it look like a restaurant dish. The swap that costs you the dish is skipping the pasta water: the pesto sits on the pasta in clumps instead of coating it.

If it goes wrong

It is dry and clumpy. There was not enough pasta water. Add a splash at a time over low heat, tossing, until the sauce loosens and coats the pasta. Keep adding it until it looks glossy.

The pesto looks dull and brown. It was heated too hard or for too long. Next time, add it at the end and toss gently. For now, a handful of torn basil and a squeeze of lemon brings back some brightness.

It is greasy. The sausage released a lot of fat. Spoon off the extra before the tomatoes go in, leaving a little in the pan for flavor.

It tastes flat. Taste it after the pesto and the parmesan are in, because both are salty. Then add salt and black pepper a pinch at a time. A little lemon juice helps too.

What to serve with it

The default is a bowl of it on its own, with the parmesan on top, as written.

The better version is a crisp green salad with lemon and a lot of black pepper. The pasta is rich and the salad cuts through it.

The thing in the fridge that lifts it is a ball of mozzarella torn over the top, or a few spoons of ricotta. A glass of white wine is optional and fits.

It works as lunch the next day, at room temperature, packed in a container with a squeeze of lemon over the top.

If you are cooking for someone you want to impress, this is a good one. It looks generous, it smells like you have been at the stove for much longer, and there is only one skillet to wash while they pour the wine.

Why this one earns its place

It is a pasta that looks after you on a night when you are short on energy. Everything in it is easy to find, the steps are simple, and the result is a bowl you would order at a restaurant. A dinner that lands this well at this speed is worth keeping in your rotation, and pesto pasta with sausage gets better the more times you make it, because you learn how much pasta water your pesto likes.

If you are short on weeknight ideas, quick weeknight dinner ideas has more. For another pasta that makes the oven do the work, baked ziti is the one to make next. And caprese pasta salad is where those cherry tomatoes and that basil go on the days it is too hot to cook.

More like this: all Italian recipes in Crave Corner.