Time to get on with today's meal the lazy man's way to make spaghetti and meatballs, sort of.
Let me introduce you to today's small cast, and I mean small, of characters.
Five, count em five ingredients. And if you are really being lazy or just cheap you can get this down to three ingredients by eliminating the "meatballs" and olive oil.
You have probably noticed by now that I'm not using spaghetti noodles and that's because I'm not a big fan of the spaghetti noodles. I prefer these rotini noodles because of their spiral shape and their ability to hold sauce. Plus rotini noodles are a lot easier to find in the whole wheat version. That's right I said whole wheat because with the way I love pasta I have to do something to try and eat healthy pasta. It is a little different than regular pasta but after a couple of meals with the whole wheat version you get use to it.
I suppose you have noticed the Johnsonville Sausage too? Well to be honest I have never found a good frozen meatball to use in spaghetti and I dare anybody to find a meatball as good as a Johnsonville Sausage. It just can't be done. Now there is always the option of making meatballs but that would take many more ingredients and much more time and since this is the lazy and cheap man's version of spaghetti and meatballs, well it just wouldn't fit here now would it?
Time to cook. Start by browning the sausage or should I say our future meatballs.
Once browned dump a jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce in the pan with the sausage.
Now look at that we are already half way done and we are barely even started. I let the sausage simmer in the sauce for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile the hardest part of making this meal is timing the noodles to be done at the same time as the spaghetti and 'meatballs.' Real tough eh?
After 45 minutes the sausage will be cooked and the sauce has thicken up a bit.
We will take care of the sauce in a bit but first the sausage. Take those bad boys out of the pan and set them on a plate or counter if you prefer. Let them rest for a couple of minutes and then......
....cut them up into meatball size chunks. Don't you love how easy it is? And good, the best you will ever have.
Time to put them back into the sauce.
If you like thick sauce you are done but if you want to thin the sauce out a little bit add some of the pasta water in it like I do.
My understanding of the pasta water is it is suppose to help the sauce stick to the noodles better by adding it back into the sauce. I saw Mario Batalli explain it one day. I am not sure I explained that right but I do know ever since I started doing it the sauce sticks to any type of noodle I use. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Add the noodles.
Stir.
And serve.
Easy, peazy and very good. Just a great meal for when you are being lazy.
Lazy Man's Spaghetti and Meatballs
1/2 pound of Johnsonville Sweet Italian Sausage
1 drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
1 jar of your favorite pasta sauce
1 box of whole wheat rotini pasta
A sprinkle of Parmesan cheese
Drizzle olive oil in skillet over medium heat and brown sausage.
Add the pasta sauce.
Cook pasta according to instructions on the box.
Remove sausage and slice into meatball size chunks.
Add back into sauce and add one cup of pasta water and mix.
Add pasta and fold everything together.
Serve with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.
3 comments:
dave would probably like your meatballs better than mine since i use ground turkey and wheat germ. trying to eat somewhat healthy you know.
For some reason I just don't like making meatballs or for that matter even meatloaf. This is the next best thing I have come up with for meatballs, pretty darn tasty too.
I use ground sausage -- way better than hamburger. I also use whole wheat penne' pasta and not noodles. i will try adding pasta water to my prego sauce the next time we have spaghetti.
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