Hey my friends!
Now that the holidays are upon us, that means spending lots of time with family and friends. That also means family style meals…
I don’t know about you, but when I think about a hearty meal, I think about Italian food. Italian food has to be my favorite type of food. And with all the plant based meat alternatives, I don’t have to give up some of my favorite dishes.
One dish I love to make is Italian spicy sausage pasta. I think it’s not only a hearty dish, but festive due to the colors in the meal. And bonus, it’s so easy to make.
Let’s begin…
The ingredients you will need to make this meal are:
- 1 box Tomato penne pasta (I love Barilla pasta)
- 8 oz. Tomato basil pasta sauce ( if you don’t have time to make your own, I personally love the Ragu Simply pasta sauce because they don’t add the extra ingredients we simply don’t need)
- 4 Plant based sausage ( I recommend the hot and spicy Beyond sausage)
- Italian seasoning
- Red pepper flakes
- Extra Virgin olive oil
- 2 cups of Baby spinach
The first thing you want to do is boil a pot of water (add a teaspoon of the olive oil, italian seasoning and red pepper flakes to the water). You always want to add the seasonings to the water, then bring to a boil. When you do this, the pasta gets infused more with the seasoning.
In a pan, add a tablespoon of olive oil and heat the pan on medium. Cut the sausages (I like to cut them diagonally) and then add to pan. Cook on each side for about 5 minutes. Stir the pasta sauce into the pan. Add some more red pepper flakes if you like your food extra spicy. Drain the pasta and add a little at a time to the pan with the sausage and pasta sauce. Put the temperature on low to simmer because you now want to add in the spinach.
Mix spinach into the pasta and sausage. You don’t want the spinach to get too wilted, so turn the stove off once you’re done mixing.
Now all you have to do is enjoy 😋
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