Review: the Pioneer Woman’s Easy One-Pan Sausage Pasta

To make Drummond’s recipe for one-pan creamy sausage pasta for six, you’ll need:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 pound sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
• A pinch of red pepper flakes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• Salt and black pepper
• 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• One 28-ounce can of tomato puree
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 pound fusilli pasta
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella
• 1/4 cup mascarpone
• Shaved Parmesan
• 10 to 12 fresh basil leaves

Drummond recommends using fusilli pasta for this dish, but you can substitute it with any pasta shape you prefer or have lying around.

And while this may look like a long list of ingredients, you may already have most of them in your kitchen.

There isn’t too much prep that goes into making this pasta dish, which also made cleanup a breeze. I only needed to wash my cutting board and the skillet I used to cook the pasta.

I allowed the sausage to slightly brown in my large nonstick skillet while breaking it up into smaller pieces with a wooden spatula. I found it was easiest to break up the sausage meat once it had been slightly cooked.

It took about five minutes for the sausage to slightly brown.

It took another five minutes for the onions to cook and fill my kitchen with a heavenly scent.

The recipe requires fennel seeds, oregano, and red pepper flakes — all staples I already had tucked away in my pantry. This made the prep process even easier.

I stirred everything together, using the oil from the sausage to brown it all. I also added salt and pepper to enhance the flavor even further.

The recipe calls for low-sodium chicken broth, tomato puree, and tomato paste to make the sauce. When I first added the ingredients, I was nervous the sauce would end up too liquidy.

I loved that I didn’t need to use an extra pot to boil water or cook the pasta separately. Everything came together in a single pan, which made the whole process incredibly efficient.

Not only did this save me time, but it also meant fewer dishes to wash — no extra pot or colander required.

For someone cooking after a long day, that kind of simplicity made a huge difference and took the stress out of making a busy weeknight dinner.

This is how Drummond’s “creamy” Italian sausage pasta gets its name — after adding in the cheese and mascarpone, the sauce became even creamier, with shreds of cheese pulling and swirling throughout the pasta as I stirred it with my spatula.

Drummond recommends garnishing the dish with shaved Parmesan cheese and basil leaves for added brightness.

The sauce, which was creamy and strongly flavored with cheese and marcarpone, clung to the noodles, while the hints of fennel seeds and red pepper flakes brought out the savory flavor of the Italian sausage.

I loved the ease of this one-pan recipe — being able to cook the pasta noodles in the same pan saved me time and cleanup, and I was impressed by how simple the instructions were to follow.

In fact, it was so simple I’m sure I could recreate this dish from memory next time.

With its rich flavors and effortless cleanup, this recipe proved that a weeknight dinner can feel indulgent without being complicated.