Pasta With Sweet Italian Sausage Recipe

If your family is anything like ours, you love Italian cuisine. It’s recipes like this pasta with sweet Italian sausage we want to share with you that has made us this way. This recipe is full of flavor and the sausage gives it just the right amount of heat.

Last February, we spent a weekend in Minneapolis, Minn., helping our son’s girlfriend celebrate her birthday.  They took us to an amazing Italian restaurant called the “Red Rabbit”. While we were waiting for a table, they were handing out samples of their own homemade Italian sausage.  While I have never been a huge Italian Sausage fan, this sample blew me away!! It was packed with flavor and left just the right amount of heat at the back of my throat.

Needless to say, when we ordered our meals, our entire family ordered something with their Italian Sausage in the recipe.  My son, Sean, and I ordered their Cavatelli with Italian Sausage dish and it was to die for!!

About Our Sweet Italian Sausage With Pasta Recipe

Unfortunately, we won’t be going back to Minneapolis anytime soon, so I’ve tried to recreate this dish using our own homemade sweet Italian sausage recipe, also inspired by Red Rabbit’s delicious sausage.  A good Italian sausage is a key to this recipe, as much of the flavor for this dish comes from the sausage itself. So until we can get back to the Red Rabbit, these two recipes will provide us with a little of that Minneapolis treat.

In our version of the recipe, I ended up using Casarecce pasta because the Cavatelli pasta is not readily available near where we live in Michigan.  Occasionally you can find it at Walmart. If not, the Casarecce works well in this dish, but you could also use a shell-like pasta too. Anything that helps hold the sauce.

Since recreating these two recipes, I’ve made the Cavatelli with sweet Italian sausage recipe a couple of times for my entire extended family and it was a huge hit. So if you can’t get to Minneapolis anytime soon, we hope you will give our recipe a try.  We’re sure you’ll enjoy it.

5 from 1 vote

Print

Cavatelli with Sweet Italian Sausage

Cook Time

25 mins

 

Servings: 6 People

Ingredients

• 1 lbs Sweet Italian Sausage can be removed from casings or fried in casings and cut on bias
• 3 Cloves Garlic minced
• ¼ C Fennel pollen or ⅛ C fennel seeds, ground
• 1 ea Lemon zest and juice
• ½ C White wine
• ½ C Parmesan cheese grated
• 2 tbsp Fresh parsley chopped.

Instructions

1. Start a large pot of water to boil. Once it comes to a full boil add salt and 1# Cavatelli or like pasta (I use Casarecce). Cook until al dente. Save out ½ C of pasta water, drain the rest.
2. While pasta cooks, fry Italian Sausage in large frypan until browned.
3. Add minced garlic and fennel pollen and fry for 1 minute (if using fennel seeds, grind down with mortar/pestle)

4. Pour white wine and work up brown bits from the bottom of the pan.  Cook down slightly, add the zest and juice from one lemon and parmesan cheese.

5. Pour over pasta and mix.  Add pasta water if needed.

6. Serve and be prepared to receive compliments!!!

Will our recipes put the Red Rabbit out of business? I don’t suspect it will. But with 700 miles between us, it makes for a real treat on special occasions or when we have a craving for some real Italian cuisine! Give both of these recipes a try. You won’t regret it. Enjoy!

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