There’s nothing quite like a simple, no-fuss pasta dish that requires minimal ingredients, one pot, and easy-to-follow instructions.
Ree Drummond, better known as the Pioneer Woman, has built a following around her simple, hearty recipes that often make enough to feed a whole family or have leftovers for days.
As someone who typically cooks for one, I’ve found that many of her dishes make easy, satisfying weeknight meals, with plenty of leftovers to reheat throughout the week. However, their simplicity and convenience also make them a great option for busy families.
On one particularly hectic evening, I tried her one-pan Italian sausage pasta and found it to be the ultimate easy comfort meal for busy nights.
Here’s how to make the Pioneer Woman’s one-pan pasta with Italian sausage.
Ree Drummond’s recipe for creamy Italian sausage one-pan pasta requires basic ingredients, including some pantry staples.
To make Drummond’s recipe for one-pan creamy sausage pasta for six, you’ll need:
Drummond recommends using fusilli pasta for this dish, but you can substitute any pasta shape you prefer or have on hand.
And while this may look like a long list of ingredients, you may already have most of them in your kitchen.
I started by dicing a medium-sized onion and a few cloves of garlic.
This pasta dish required very little prep, which also meant cleanup was a breeze. Aside from a few utensils, I only had to wash the cutting board and skillet I used to prepare the meal.
After prepping my vegetables, I heated the olive oil in a pan and added the sweet sausage meat.
I let the sausage brown slightly in a large nonstick skillet before breaking it into smaller pieces with a wooden spatula, a task that became easier as the meat cooked.
It took about five minutes for the sausage to lightly brown.
I then added the diced onion and cooked it until it became translucent.
It took another five minutes for the onions to cook and fill my kitchen with a heavenly scent.
I then added the seasonings and the garlic.
The recipe calls for fennel seeds, oregano, and red pepper flakes — all pantry staples I already had on hand, making the prep process even easier.
I stirred the seasonings into the sausage, allowing them to toast slightly in the rendered fat to bring out their flavors. I also added salt and pepper for an extra boost of flavor.
I then added the ingredients for the tomato sauce and the uncooked pasta noodles.
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.
After cooking the pasta noodles in the sauce for about 20 minutes, the sauce thickened.
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.
After a long day, I really appreciated how simple the whole process was. It took a lot of the stress out of getting dinner on the table on a busy weeknight.
After the pasta had fully cooked, I removed the pan from the heat and added a cup of shredded mozzarella cheese and the mascarpone.
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.
The final result was a comforting, unbelievably easy pasta dish that I’ll make time and time again.
Drummond recommends garnishing the dish with shaved Parmesan cheese and basil leaves for added brightness.
The pasta was creamy and savory, making it the perfect one-pan meal for a busy weeknight.
The sauce, which was creamy and strongly flavored with cheese and mascarpone, 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 — cooking 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.
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