2For66

Prepared: January 11, 2024

One pot pasta was in the zeitgeist over the winter. I figured I’d give it a try. I hunted around and found a recipe on Jo Cooks that could work. Of course the big draw to this recipe is that it cooks in one pan meaning you don’t have to stand around waiting for the pasta water to boil and you have one less pot to cook. Things I liked about the receipe were it was simple, it used penne instead of spaghetti, it calls for breaking up the link Italian sausage.

Let’s line up the short and simple ingredients.

You may notice three things that are different – for me – in the ingredients. In the spirit of making a quick meal I’m using pre-shredded Parmigiana-Reggiano cheese and Better Than Bouillon rather than home made chicken stock; using a can or carton of low sodium chicken stock would be quicker still. Boullon is faster than thawing out a container of frozen stock, but it has way more salt than homemade stock so I opted for No-Salt-Added tomato sauce.

A minimum of measuring and chopping gets us ready to go. Oops, I forgot to include the quart of chicken broth.

First we brown the broken up sausage links. I love the approach of preparing the sausage. It creates nice bite-sized pieces, kind of like mini meatballs. I’ll definitely use this method in the future.

It’s One Pot Pasta so almost everything – not the cheese – goes in at the same time. This is the draw of one pot recipes.

Simmer until the pasta is done and the liquid reduced.

Then there is nothing left to do but serve and eat. Dinner is served.

The Pro of this method is that it is simple, easy, and quick. It was okay but you won’t mistake this for a restaurant quality dish – though to be honest that isn’t the purpose. Using homemade stock would have been a big positive, but then you lose the goal of having a simple dinner. The biggest problem was that it was too watery and by the time the liquid cooked down, the pasta was looking at al dente in the rear view mirror. That could likely have been fixed by simmering everything but the penne first, then adding the pasta for the last 10-15 minutes.

To be fair, I’m probably not the target audience for this dish. If you love to cook and have plenty of time – like I do – you probably don’t mind extra steps and and extra pot. However, if you are a cook trying to get dinner on the table after a long day, this will definitely fit the bill. The recipe has a full 5 stars on Jo’s page and the comments are full of people who loved it. I’m just one voice.

Rating: ★★ 2 stars. Which means it’s okay but I won’t make again. Like I say, I’m not the target audience for this. The one thing I suggest is that if you make this, don’t add the pasta in the first step. Hold it back for at least 10 minutes to give the sauce time to thicken.