Creamy ground pork pasta with zucchini
- Preparation 20 min
- Cooking 30 min
- Servings 4
- Freezing Absolutely
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🧀 Ground pork pasta that skips the tomato sauce
This one is built the way a cacio e pepe is built: pecorino romano and Parmesan melted into starchy pasta water until every rigatoni is coated in something glossy and salty. No jar of sauce, no carton of cream. Cheese, pork fat, and the water you were about to pour down the drain.
🥒 Zucchini that stays firm
Diced small, in the hot pot three or four minutes, out. Cook zucchini for pasta any longer than that and it dumps its water into the sauce and turns to mush. Kept firm, it does the one job it is there for, which is cutting through 400 g of cheese so the bowl does not flatten you halfway through. Leave it out and the dish becomes too much of one thing.
🍽️ A weeknight dish that does not eat like one
I saw a video of something close to this a good ten years ago, out of an Italian restaurant run by a chef I have followed ever since. I borrowed the idea and made it mine. It has been a Tuesday-night regular here for years, and I have still served it to company on a Saturday without apologizing for it. If this is your corner of the pasta world, look at my rigatoni with roasted red pepper puree and mushrooms and my zucchini mac and cheese.
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🧀 Both cheeses, or do not bother
Parmesan alone makes a fine pasta. It does not make this one. Pecorino romano is the salt and the edge, Parmesan is the fruit and the nuttiness, and half and half is the whole trick. Yes, 400 g of cheese to 454 g (1 lb) of rigatoni is on purpose.
💧 The pasta water is the sauce
Reserve a cup (250 ml) before you drain. Once the rigatoni hits the colander that starch is gone, and starch is what lets the cheese emulsify instead of seizing into strings.
🔥 Brown the ground pork hard
Medium heat steams it. It stays grey, it stays bland, and no amount of cheese rescues it later. Crank the burner, break the meat into small pieces, then leave it alone long enough to take colour. Most of the flavour in the finished bowl is decided in those six to eight minutes, not in the sauce.
🥒 Three minutes, four at the outside
Any longer and the zucchini collapses and thins the sauce.
🍝 Pull the pasta a minute early
It finishes cooking in the pot with the cheese and the water. Follow the package time to the letter and you get soft pasta on the plate.
♨️ One pot from start to finish
The rigatoni boils, comes out, and the same pot takes the onion, the pork and the zucchini. Fewer dishes is the small reason. The real one is the fond stuck to the bottom, which ends up in the sauce where it belongs.
🧊 Freezing and leftovers
It freezes without trouble. The sauce shifts a little on thawing, nothing worth worrying about. Reheat with a splash of reserved pasta water, plain water, or milk. Three to four days in the fridge.
✅ What to serve with ground pork pasta
Nothing, honestly. It is a full plate on its own. If you want something beside it, a green salad with a sharp vinaigrette earns its place by cutting the cheese. Same comfort territory: my bacon and cheese sausage stuffed shells and my creamy sausage pasta with spinach and spaghetti squash.
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Ingredients
- 200 g (2 cups) fresh pecorino romano, finely grated
- 200 g (2 cups) fresh Parmesan, finely grated
- 454 g (1 lb) rigatoni
- 1 cup (250 ml) reserved pasta cooking water
- 2 to 3 tbsp (30 to 45 ml) olive oil
- 2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
- 800 g (1¾ lb) lean ground pork
- 1 tsp (5 ml) Italian seasoning
- 3 zucchini, cut into small cubes (about 4 cups / 1 L)
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Preparation
- Put both grated cheeses in a large bowl and mix well. Set aside.
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the rigatoni al dente following the package instructions. Reserve 1 cup (250 ml) of the cooking water, then drain the pasta in a colander. Drain well and set aside.
- In the same large pot over medium heat, pour in a generous drizzle of olive oil and cook the garlic and onion for 2 to 3 minutes.
- Raise the heat to high. Add the pork and ½ tsp (2 ml) Italian seasoning, then season with salt and pepper. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, breaking the meat into small pieces, until the pork is no longer pink and has browned well. Drain the fat and set the meat aside in a bowl.
- Add the zucchini and the remaining Italian seasoning, then season with salt and pepper. Cook 3 to 4 minutes, stirring, just enough for them to stay firm.
- Lower the heat to medium. Return the pasta and meat to the pot along with three quarters of the cheese and ¾ cup (180 ml) of the cooking water. Cook a few more minutes, stirring, to melt the cheese and make everything creamy. Add a little more reserved cooking water if the sauce thickens too much. Serve immediately and top with the remaining cheese.
Better than most people expect. It is fattier and sweeter than ground beef, so it browns faster and it does not need a long simmer to stop tasting raw. Six to eight minutes over high heat and it is done. It also takes salt well, which matters a lot in a dish whose sauce is essentially cheese. I use lean ground pork here: 800 g (1¾ lb) of regular would leave far too much fat in the pot.
Cut it into small cubes rather than rounds, get the pot hot, and give it three to four minutes with a bit of stirring. That is long enough to take the raw edge off and short enough that it does not release its water. The moment it looks glossy and slumped it has gone too far, so pull it. You can also stir raw zucchini into a finished sauce, but then you give up the browning, and the browning is half the point.
This recipe is the whole argument for it. Finely grated cheese plus starchy cooking water emulsifies into a sauce that clings to rigatoni better than most tomato sauces manage. The other routes without tomato are cream, pesto, or a puree of a roasted vegetable, which is the road my rigatoni with roasted red pepper puree and mushrooms takes.
Heat and liquid, almost every time. Drop the burner to medium before the cheese goes anywhere near the pot, and do not skip the reserved water. If it starts tightening into strings, add a splash more water and keep stirring, and it comes back. Grate fine as well. Coarse shreds of pecorino melt unevenly and leave you with pockets of cheese instead of a sauce.
On its own it is already a complete meal: pork, vegetable, starch, and more cheese than is strictly reasonable. A green salad with an acidic vinaigrette is the one side that genuinely improves it, because the acid resets the palate against 400 g of cheese. Garlic bread is a good idea for a crowd and a bad idea for anyone who plans on moving afterward.
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