Sausage + Kale Pasta

This one pot pasta (or two pots, if you're in a rush) is delicious and simple to make.

Ingredients:

• One italian sausage
• A batch of greens (kale, spinach, or arugula)
• Pasta
• Chicken Broth
• Salt
• Grated cheese (optional)
• Black pepper (optional)

I first saw this recipe[1] on Food Wishes blog and thought it'd be something to try for extra sausage that I had from soup. Since trying it, I've been making this just about every other week to try different variations and here are my thoughts.

1) With spinach and all in one pot exactly like his instructions - while I used low sodium chicken broth, cooking the pasta in broth made the overall dish salty. I like nearly bland tastes so the next variations use a 2nd pot to cook pasta in water.
2) With spinach, pasta cooked in separate pot, and sliced sausage instead of unpeeled and mashed - turns out I like the charm of mashed up sausage chunks rather than neatly sliced meat. This version used very little chicken broth so it didn't have as much flavor.
3) With kale and market italian sweet sausage, cooking kale and pasta in separate pot - I saw another recipe[2] that suggested cooking kale separately in salted water and reusing the water for pasta. Loved this way more. Kale is more substantial than tender spinach, so paired with the pasta it was really nice texture. I still used some chicken broth to soak all the ingredients for taste and also added some garlic and onion for extra flavor. Topped with fresh grated cheese and black pepper - it is just fabulous.
4) Finally found orecchiette pasta at Food Emporium for under <$5 per lb, so I was able to try it. Wow! Even better than bow tie, spirals, and other shapes.

[1]: http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2014/08/one-pan-orecchiette-with-sausage-and.html
[2]: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/fettuccine-with-sausage-and-kale-233976

Found orecchiette pasta to cook for dinner! This dish has sweet italian sausage, kale, chicken broth and of course delicious pasta. Topped with fresh ground black pepper and grated cheese #winterfood #yum #nom #instafood #cooking #pasta

A photo posted by Dr. Kat (@katsupnfries) on Feb 22, 2015 at 3:55pm PST