Creamy Sausage Goodness

I'm not exactly sure where this recipe came from, I know it was a family member, and I suspect it was Mike or Carrie, or both, but I can't remember.  All I know is I've been making this for a long time and it is really easy and fantastically delicious.

Fettucini with Tomato and Sausage Sauce


-2Tbsp Olive Oil
-3 Shallots, chopped
-2 large garlic cloves, chopped (I generally turn this into 5 or 6 cloves, I love me some garlic)
-1lb sweet Italian sausage, casings removed (Let me be real honest here, I make it with 2lbs of sausage - who doesn't want more sausage?)
-1 cup whipping cream
-2 14.5oz cans of diced tomatoes in juice with Italian seasoning
-1Tbsp dried sage
-1/2tsp dried crushed red pepper
-fettucini (seems obvious but you know, its a recipe they spell things out)
-Parmesan cheese


Ok children, if you remember from last time read the whole recipe first.  Which in this case is pretty easy, as I said its a simple straightforward recipe and really only takes about 30 minutes to put together.  Get out your big cutting board (mine is bigger, seriously don't even argue its huge).  Chop your shallots, I think you could probably go with bigger or smaller chunks here depending the size of the pieces you want in the final product.

Grab the head of garlic and pull a few cloves out of there.  The recipe calls for 2 large cloves and you could do that, if you're boring and don't like garlic.  It's like not liking cilantro - who does that?  I'm pretty sure every time I've ever followed the recommended dosage of garlic in a recipe I've ended up feeling like there wasn't enough garlic flavor when all was said and done.  In order to combat this I always double the garlic.  I don't even think twice about it, and up to this point I've never regretted this decision.  

Before we can chop the garlic we have to peel the annoying little buggers.  This is one of my least favorite things to do, garlic gets sticky, so your fingers get sticky and things stick to them, like the stuff you're trying to peel off the garlic.  Here's a cool trick though to make this easier: take your big chef's knife and use the flat side of the blade and place it above the clove of garlic you are getting ready to peel.  Then use the heel of your other hand (try not to cut yourself, seriously its not hard, don't be an idiot) and smack the blade down onto the clove.  This makes it so much easier to peel the clove.  This trick changed my life like when I realized Zack Morris was the person I most aspired to be....just me?

Finish peeling and chopping your garlic and pull out the sausage.  Real quick note here, when you're buying your sausage, it is imperative that you DO NOT buy one of those slightly pre-cooked versions.  You won't be able to do the next step properly.  Point of fact: you won't be able to do it at all.

Removing the casing from the sausage is really simple, however it is moderately creepy, its kind of like cutting a sticky condom off each one.  Try it and then see if you don't feel the same way.

2lbs of de-cased sausage.  It might look disgusting, but its farkin delicious

For those who may be wondering why we're removing these casings, the answer is that we don't want perfect slices of sausage, we want to brown the sausage almost as if it was ground beef and we intended to put it in tacos (holy crap sausage tacos....how does this not exist?).

At this point there isn't a whole lot of additional prep that is needed.  If you really want to you can measure out the whipping cream, sage and crushed red pepper, but there is plenty of time and no need to rush with this recipe.

I would start a pot of boiling water for the fettucini somewhere in here.  When the water is boiling throw some fettucini at it.  You can definitely use a different kind of pasta if you prefer.  I've made this with rotini, shells, spaghetti, fettucini, you name it I've probably tried it out at some point.  Also in case you haven't noticed I've made this a lot.  Its a fan favorite.

Grab your big and hopefully deep skillet.  You are definitely going to need 12 inches for this one (that's what she said) If you don't have a skillet that big you can use a big pot.  I used to do this before acquired my giant skillet.

Heat the 2Tbsp of oil over medium-high heat and then add the shallots and garlic and sauté for a few minutes until everything softens and takes on a yellowish buttery goodness color.  While this is happening stop for just a second and bask into the most amazing smell that will ever dance its way into your nostrils.  Seriously nothing smells better than sautéing onions and garlic, this is not negotiable.

After about 3 minutes or so when everything is slightly soft, limp, flaccid whatever you prefer to call it start adding the sausage.  If you stuck with the recipe, which is a completely acceptable choice, your measly 1lb of sausage will fit in nicely and brown easily I'm sure.  Having chosen to go with 2lbs my pan was certainly running out of room, but definitely still manageable.  One downside to 2lbs of sausage that I would certainly remedy next time around is that the recipe does not call for you to drain the pan before the next step.  As a result, the sauce didn't quite thicken the way its supposed to.  It was still fantastic but I would drain just bit of the pan to even it out.

While the sausage it browning use a spatula or fork to break up the sausage into smaller pieces.  We want to make sure there is a nice even spread of sausage.  Once there are no pink pieces of sausage left we can move on and add the whipping cream.

After adding the cream, lower the heat to a simmer and let the mixture sit for about five minutes.  Try to resist the urge to snatch pieces of sausage for tasting purposes.

Who am I kidding, I always snag some sausage at this point.  Plus I kind of have a reputation for stealing Italian sausage, it really started for me when I was 11 or so.  That'll teach dad to come home late from work.  Also learned an important lesson about lying, but I digress.

Once you've let this magnificent concoction simmer for a bit its time to add the rest of the ingredients.  Dump the tomatoes with their juices, sage and crushed red pepper and mix it all in.

Let the sauce continue to simmer for about 15 minutes so it can thicken.  This is where my sauce didn't really thicken very much, way to much juice from the sausage.  But really would you rather the sauce thicken or have more sausage?  I say more sausage, every time.





Somewhere along the line your water should have started boiling and you should have added your pasta of choice to said boiling water.  A few small notes/tips/tricks.  Personally when dealing with spaghetti or fettucini I like to snap it in half before tossing it in the water, it makes it a little more manageable later.  If you are a wrap the pasta around your fork using a spoon kind of person, don't do this.  Also if you find your water starting to bubble over as the pasta cooks, add a splash of olive oil to the water.  I actually have no idea why this works, but it does.  I never promised to have all the answers.

When your pasta is ready, drain the pot, preferably using a colander.  Side note: a colander is the bowl with tons of holes in it, in case you were wondering.

Pasta will essentially continue to cook itself even after its removed from the boiling water, so run some cold water over it while its in the colander will keep it right where you want it.

Return the pasta to the pot you cooked it in and put it back over medium-ish heat to evaporate the rest of the water.  Dump our awesome sauce into the pot and mix it all together.  Mix it for a few minutes over heat until no bare pasta is left.  Really get after it in this stage, the last thing you want is to realize that whoever serves themselves last doesn't get any sausage because you couldn't be bothered to properly mix it.  Then again, if you use as much sausage as I did it would seem unlikely that this could happen.

It is now ready to be eaten.  Bowls are probably best for serving this, no one wants to try and eat this off of a plate.  Add Parmesan cheese as desired, or if you've been a bonehead and forgot to get Parmesan cheese, suck it up and eat it without it.  I totally forgot the Parmesan cheese yesterday.


Now as I've said I'm a big fan of coming up with a full meal to create the whole proper eating experience.  However in this case, the pasta stands on its own so well that all I ever serve with it is a Caesar salad and some garlic bread.  I feel that there is no need to overdo it.  And if you can't figure out how to buy a prepackaged Caesar bag and one of those awesome frozen garlic bread things (seriously they're good) then you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway.

Last but certainly not least is the wine selection.  For this meal I did not provide the wine, it was provided for me, and it was really good.  I had never had Sonoma-Cutrer before but I would absolutely go buy a bottle, or 4.  However we finished that bottle pretty early on.  Round 2 was a Red Bicyclette Chardonnay, nothing super fancy but certainly more than acceptable.