This was one of the first pasta recipes I learned to cook as a kid,
which means I've been cooking and eating it for over 30 years. There's no fuss, just
simple ingredients coming together in 20 minutes to make some comfort food heaven.
Hi I'm Nicky, welcome back to our kitchen where we show you how to make delicious
family-friendly recipes. In our house this recipe is called cheesy pasta yay because whenever I tell
the kids I'm making cheesy pasta they say, the one with the sausage and bacon yay, so it guarantees
clean plates all around. It really is simple, easy back to school comfort food, so let's get cooking.
We're going to start by cooking the sausages. So I've got four good quality pork sausages here
and I'm going to place them on a baking tray and place them in a pre-heated oven
at about 200c or 400f for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and cooked through.
Once the sausages have been in the oven for about 10 minutes we're going to cook the pasta, I've got
about 400 grams which is 14 ounces of fusilli pasta here, but you can use your favorite pasta
shapes, and we're going to cook that in boiling water as per the pack instructions until al dante.
While the pasta and sausages are cooking place a large frying pan over a medium heat to heat up.
I've got eight rashers of smoked streaky bacon and I'm going to add those to the pan
and cook for about five to six minutes turning once during cooking until browned and crispy.
Now remove the bacon from the pan and place on a chopping board.
Top up that leftover bacon fat in the pan with an extra half a tablespoon of sunflower oil, add
a finely diced onion to the pan and cook for five minutes stirring often until the onions softened.
Is it just me or is the smell of onions frying in bacon fat just amazing,
this is going to be so tasty.
By now the pasta should be ready so we're going to drain it in a colander
remembering to save a cup of the pasta water for the sauce for later on.
Add the drained pasta to the frying pan with the onion.
And now we're going to add in 150 grams, which is about one and a half packed cups,
of grated mature or strong cheddar cheese plus 180 ml which is three quarters of a cup
of double or heavy cream and half a teaspoon of black pepper to the pan.
Now stir it all together with the pasta until the cheese is melted.
Okay now we need to roughly chop up the sausages and the bacon,
it doesn't need to be cheffy just nice generous chunky pieces of both.
Add the chopped sausage and bacon to the pan with the pasta,
then stir everything together until it's nicely combined.
If you want to loosen the sauce a little bit add splashes of the
pasta cooking water to the sauce until it's thinned to your liking.
Now transfer the pasta to bowls and serve top with some fresh parsley
and a little bit more black pepper if you like.
This really is such a simple recipe that comes together really quickly. It's definitely
not diet food but if you wanted to add some veggies to it it works really well with peas,
peppers or courgette, and if you really like this type of quick and easy comfort food
then check out my creamy tomato ravioli where I show you how to turn shot bought ravioli
into something truly spectacular. Now let's give this a taste,
ah cheesy deliciousness, it's so good.