Italian Sausage and Spinach Pasta

Sometimes you feel hungry, but you start thinking about the prep work and the cooking process.  I can’t lie.  There are times where I would rather stick something frozen in the oven.  Luckily I came across a quick recipe that only took about an hour with prep and all! The result was a really colorful, light pasta that tasted even better as a left-over!

The largest amount of time I took to prepare for making this recipe was creating the chicken broth.  Of course this isn’t necessary, one can simply grabbed a few cans of low sodium chicken broth at the grocery store.  I made the broth with the chicken carcass from when I roasted a whole chicken (read about it here: https://johnpatrickmurphy.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/charcoal-grilled-whole-chicken/).  It’s really simple to create a stock from a chicken carcass. It is, however, time consuming.

There is a difference between broth and stock though.  Typically stock is created with only the bones of the chicken where as broth is made with the meat.  Both of course are still brewed with extra ingredients.  I used celery, carrots, whole pepper corns, garlic, and an onion.  Throwing all of the ingredients in a pot and putting in enough water to cover everything, I set the stove to medium heat and let the concoction brew for 5 hours.  To get a really thick stock for something like gravy it’s best to remove as much meat as possible.  Really try a strip it down to pure bone.  Doing this will use less water to cover it causing less liquid to reduce .

I, on the other hand, left quite a bit of meat on the bones and added a bit more water than necessary.  I also could have let it stew for a few more hours to reduce a bit.  I wanted a lighter, more broth-y “stock” because it opens up its utility by being able to replace canned chicken broth.  As well, it adds a thicker, more flavorful richness to the recipes than low-sodium chicken broth can.

Apart from the chicken broth, preparation called for stripping the outer skin of the hot Italian sausages and smashing the garlic.  I started by heating 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a 4″ deep pot over medium heat.  After a bit, steam can be seen coming off the olive oil. It was at this point I threw 6 cloves of garlic in the pot.  I stirred it around until a strong garlic smell rose into my nostrils.  It’s at this critical point that ingredients need to be thrown in on oil and garlic in any circumstance.  If you don’t get an ingredient in there quickly the garlic could burn giving a distinct flavor to the entire dish.

For the pasta, I threw 6 sausages with their skin removed in the pot and broke them up with a wooden spoon. If using turkey or chicken sausage there is no need to drain the pan, but in the case of pork it’s necessary.  Of course, make sure all of the pink is gone on the sausage before draining all of the excess juices.

Once I had finished cooking and draining the sausage, I measured 4 1/2 cups of broth and blasted the heat to high.  A few tablespoons of oil preserved sun dried tomatoes and a box of penne pasta closely followed.  I waited about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, before testing the penne for the correct tenderness.  I threw 1 cup of grated parmesan in for good measure, cut the heat off, and tossed two bags of baby spinach into the mix.  A few more stirs was all it took to wilt the spinach rendering the pasta ready to serve!