Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make my favorite rigatoni.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here! And today, I am so excited to be sharing another
one of my favorite pasta dishes.
This is a hearty sausage
rigatoni. It's a very easy to make, one of my favorite weeknight dinners,
so let's go ahead and get started. Now
this whole recipe is done over on the stovetop,
and I like to begin by preparing my rigatoni.
You'll need 12 ounces of rigatoni pasta for today's recipe.
Now I'm starting with a medium saucepan that I filled
about halfway with water, and I am going to add a generous pinch of salt to that.
We're going to bring this pot to a boil. Once we have a nice, rapid boil,
we're going to add 12 ounces of dry rigatoni noodles,
and we're going to cook them until they're al dente.
Typically, this is about 11 or 12 minutes.
You will want to stir occasionally so that the pasta doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot.
All right, now once your pasta is cooked,
you're going to want to take this over to your sink.
We are going to drain this completely,
and then I like to run the pasta under cold water to stop it from cooking.
I'll just pour this right back into my pot and I'm going to set it aside,
while I prepare the sauce. I recommend using a large pot
for today's recipe because you're going to need to fit all of those noodles in it
and you want to have plenty of room to stir things,
so I'm using my Dutch oven. I would like to note that I'm using an enameled cast iron pot.
I don't like to use just a regular un-enameled one
because sometimes the iron can react with the acidity from the tomatoes
we're going to be cooking and you can make your dish too acidic,
so an enameled cast iron,
or a stainless steel, pot is really the way to go here.
And I am going to add a drizzle of olive oil,
I'd say about 2 tablespoons of olive oil,
to the pot. Now we'll turn our stove top heat to medium,
and we're going to let this olive oil warm up until it's shimmering.
Once that's nice and hot, we're going to add 1 medium sized, diced,
yellow onion. Now we’ll cook this until it's nice and softened usually takes about 3 to 5 minutes.
Alright, once your onion is nice and soft, we're going to add some garlic.
I like to use a tablespoon, sometimes a heaping tablespoon because I love my garlic.
I'm going to sprinkle that right over the onion
and I'm just going to stir it in the pot
while it cooks and we’ll cook this garlic until it's nice and fragrant,
which is usually just about 30 seconds.
Alright, next you will need 1 pound of sausage,
so I like to use a mild Italian sausage,
but you can cater this recipe to your personal preferences
and you can use sweet Italian or hot italian sausage
instead. We're going to add this to the pot, and we're going to cook
it until it's cooked through. We're just going to crumble it while we cook it,
break it up into nice bite-sized pieces.
Once our sausage is nice and cooked through, we're going to add 28 ounces of crushed,
canned, tomatoes. And 8 ounces of tomato sauce.
Now to help fight the acidity that sometimes comes from using tomatoes—
especially canned tomatoes—we're going to be adding a tablespoon of granulated sugar.
For our seasoning today,
we're using one and a half teaspoons of Italian
seasoning, a teaspoon of dried basil,
a half teaspoon of onion powder, 1/4 teaspoon of table
salt, a half teaspoon of ground, black pepper,
and for a really subtle heat,
I also like to add 1/4 teaspoon of crushed,
red pepper. All right, let's get everything nicely stirred together here.
And I like to bring this to a simmer.
Once we have this simmering, let's go ahead
and grab that pasta and we are going to pour it right in the pot.
Stir everything. You want to get all of those rigatoni
noodles nicely coated. And to help add a subtle amount of creaminess,
a subtle hint of richness to this dinner
without making it too rich, I like to add just one third cup of heavy cream.
And then just 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese.
I'll stir everything together.
And I'll usually let this sit
for just a couple minutes before I go ahead and portion it out and enjoy.
And that is how you make one of my favorite easy weeknight dinners.
I hope you guys love this one as much as my family does.
If you try this recipe, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
I always love hearing from you. Thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you next time.
You should always add a little extra parmesan cheese on top too.
So good.