Farfalle with Italian sausage, peppers and grape tomatoes
- Preparation 10 min
- Cooking 20 min
- Servings 4
- Freezing I do not suggest
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🍝 One of the first recipes I ever put on this site
This one goes way back. It stuck around because my kids keep asking for it. Vegetables, pasta, tomatoes, sausage, parmesan. That is the whole list. A weeknight dinner that lands on the table in thirty minutes and that nobody at my house has ever pushed away.
🍅 The sauce builds itself at the bottom of the pot
Nothing simmers here. The grape tomatoes go in at the very end and they never really cook, they just warm through. Two minutes, that is it. The skins stay on, they burst in your mouth, and the little juice they release meets the olive oil and the parmesan sitting in the bottom of the pot. That is your sauce. It sounds like nothing written down. On the plate it is another story.
🧀 Two cups of parmesan, on purpose
Yes, it is a lot. It is a lot because I love the stuff, and because parmesan and olive oil are the only two things holding this pasta together. A cup and a half goes in the pot, the rest gets grated over each plate. If you want the long, saucy version with canned tomatoes, white wine and cream, that is my penne with Italian sausage and tomatoes. Different dinner entirely.
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🌭 You want the meat, not the sausage
Split the casing with the tip of a knife and push the meat straight into the pot. Six hot sausages look like a mountain in the package and turn out to be a very reasonable amount once broken up. Roll your own homemade Italian sausages and you can skip the casing step altogether.
🫒 Drain the fat, then put a tiny bit back
It reads like a contradiction. You drain the sausage fat, and two steps later you pour in a good drizzle of olive oil. That is on purpose.
Sausages are unpredictable. Some packs render almost nothing, some flood the pot. Keep all that fat and the pasta turns heavy and starts tasting like pork instead of tomato. Drain it and you are the one deciding how much fat comes back, and what comes back is olive oil, which brings flavor of its own.
Leave a thin film in the bottom, though. A bone dry pot and the peppers will catch.
🫑 Peppers stay crunchy
Three to four minutes. A soft pepper is garnish. A pepper with a bite is an ingredient.
🍅 The tomatoes never really cook
They warm through, and that distinction is the entire recipe. Two minutes of gentle stirring, just long enough for the skins to tighten without splitting. The juice that escapes meets the olive oil and the parmesan sitting at the bottom of the pot, and that is where the sauce comes from. Push it to five minutes and you have made an ordinary tomato sauce like everybody else.
🧀 Parmesan in two stages
A cup and a half goes in the pot with the heat almost off, so it melts on contact and coats every piece of pasta. The rest gets grated over each plate at the table, for texture and a last hit of salt.
If it looks dry before serving, save a little pasta water and stir in a spoonful or two. I think it is perfect as is, but the option is there.
🍝 Looking for the saucy one?
This dish and my penne with Italian sausage and tomatoes start from the same sausage and end up in two different worlds. The penne simmers in canned tomatoes, white wine and cream, and it belongs to November. This one belongs to August: raw tomatoes, nothing simmering, done in thirty minutes. The farfalle came first, for the record.
✅ What do you serve with Italian sausage and peppers pasta?
Nothing. Vegetables, pasta, tomatoes, meat and cheese are already in the pot. A salad on the side is just one more dish to wash. Serve it straight from the pot while the tomatoes are still warm.
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Ingredients
- About 450 g (1 lb) farfalle
- The meat from 6 hot Italian sausages
- Olive oil
- 2 orange bell peppers, diced
- 1 pint (250 g) grape tomatoes, halved
- A big handful of fresh parsley, coarsely chopped
- 2 cups (500 ml) fresh parmesan, grated
- Salt and ground pepper
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Preparation
- In a large pot, bring a good quantity of water to a boil and cook the pasta as per instructions on the box. Drain and set aside.
- Meanwhile, in a big pot over medium heat, cook the Italian sausage meat in a small drizzle of olive oil. Cook for about 5 minutes and break it into small pieces. Drain and throw away the fat.
- Add the peppers and cook for 3-4 minutes. Stir often.
- Throw the pasta in the big pot along with a good drizzle of olive oil. Stir well.
- Add the tomatoes, parsley and 1 1/2 cup (375 ml) of parmesan then stir well. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Cook for 2 minutes while stirring delicately. Tomatoes must simply get warm and keep their texture. Serve right away and garnish with a bunch of fresh parmesan on top!
Short shapes with somewhere for the meat to hide. I use farfalle because I like farfalle, and because the pinched middle catches the crumbles of sausage. Penne, rigatoni and fusilli all do the job. Skip the long strands: with no sauce to coat them, spaghetti lets everything slide to the bottom of the bowl.
You are looking at it. There is no cream, no milk and no jarred sauce anywhere in this recipe. What coats the pasta is olive oil, the juice the grape tomatoes release in the last two minutes, and two cups of freshly grated parmesan melting on contact. It tastes rich without weighing anything down, and it is the reason this pasta works in the middle of August.
Here, the sauce makes itself in the bottom of the pot. Olive oil, a little rendered sausage fat, tomato juice and parmesan come together as you stir. If you would rather have a real simmered tomato sauce with white wine and cream, I have a separate recipe for that and it uses penne.
Not here. Two minutes over medium heat is all they get, and the goal is warm, not cooked. The skins tighten, the halves keep their shape, and they burst when you bite them. Cook them longer and they collapse into a sauce, which is exactly what this dish is trying not to be.
Nothing at all. Peppers, pasta, tomatoes, sausage and cheese are all in the same pot, so dinner is already complete. This is a weeknight meal, not a three course dinner. Serve it right away with the rest of the parmesan on the table.
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