Italian Sausage Sage Pasta in 5 Ingredients

Now, I know what you are thinking- sage is for burning pre-yoga class or to cleanse your apartment of the bad juju from last week’s date. And while you are right, it does have another delicious purpose- flavor for your food including tonight’s easy pasta dish.

I love this 5 ingredient pasta because you can jazz it up with some white wine and shallots, or keep it simple with 5 ingredients and still hit all your major food groups. Hope you enjoy! (And maybe save a little of the burning sage for next week’s dinner?)

Serves: 4                                    Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

·       2 Cups Orecchiette Pasta

·        1 pound of Hot or Sweet Italian Sausage (I like to use hot sausage to bring heat to the dish)

·        1 bunch of asparagus

·        A few twigs of sage

·        Parmesan Cheese

Optional Ingredients

·        White wine

·        Shallots

·        Olive Oil

Recipe

1. Place a pot of water on to boil (for the pasta)

2. In a large pan begin to cook the sausage. It has enough fats in it to cook itself without burning (but you can add some olive oil and shallots if you’d like)

3. As it begins to cook, rough chop the sage and add it to the meat.

4. Once the sausage is mostly cooked through, chop asparagus into bite sized pieces and add to the sausage. (Here you can add a dash of white wine if desired)

5. Cook pasta in the boiling water and drain when ready.

6. Add cooked pasta directly to the pan with the sausage, sage, and asparagus. Toss to fully incorporate pasta and coat with flavor.

7. Stir in some Parmesan cheese (You don’t need much!)

8. Serve and Enjoy!

Tips:

• I love this pasta for night’s I get in late or am in a rush. It is super quick and easy, packs a ton of flavor, taps into all your food groups, and is easy to store!

• You can add shallots and olive oil to the dish when cooking the sausage, and white wine later to balance out some of the heat if you chose the spicy sausage.

• Whole Foods (and probably your local deli) can sell you the sausage without the wrappers so you don’t have to waste time peeling those off yourself.

• Almost every grocery store sells “single serve” herbs in their fresh produce area, this is where I find the sage for cooking rather than burning!