Easy pasta recipes are always great on a busy night, and my kids will always eat pasta for dinner. This pasta recipe includes lots of dark, leafy greens and lean chicken sausage for protein. If you haven’t got broccoli rabe, any other dark leafy vegetable like spinach, collard greens, kale or chard will also work.
I used Al Fresco Sweet Italian Chicken Sausage because it’s easy to find in most supermarkets around here. It’s a little salty, but it balances out those dark leafy greens really well.
You can add a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese if you want to, but I felt like the sausage was salty enough. Adding Parmesan cheese would’ve made the dish too salty, so I left it out.
As for the fennel seed, it’s a great complement to the chicken sausage but you can swap in red pepper flakes or just ground black pepper if you haven’t got fennel seed on hand.
I used orecchiette pasta because my family likes unique pasta shapes for the sake of novelty. However, you could easily use any other small pasta like shells or farfalle.
Pasta With Broccoli Rabe and Sausage
Ingredients
- 8 ounces uncooked orecchiette pasta (or any other small pasta shape)
- 1 bunch broccoli rabe (tough stems removed)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound Italian-seasoned chicken sausage (chopped or sliced)
- ¼ teaspoon fennel seed
- 2 cloves garlic (minced)
Instructions
- Boil a pot of water and cook the pasta according to package instructions. Omit the salt.
- Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and cook the sausage until lightly browned.
- Add the fennel seed and minced garlic to the skillet and stir for 1 minute, until the garlic becomes fragrant (you can use a mortar and pestle to grind the fennel seed if you want to — I think it goes well with the sausage.) If you don't have any fennel seed, some black pepper or red pepper flakes would also be nice.
- About 4 minutes before the pasta is done cooking, add the broccoli rabe to the pasta pot and let it boil for 4 minutes until soft. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the broccoli rabe to the skillet, and mix it with the sausages.
- Drain the pasta, and stir the pasta together with the broccoli rabe and sausage mixture.
- You can sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top just before serving. I preferred not to, because the sausage is already pretty salty. Sausage + Parmesan cheese is TOO salty for my taste.
