Spicy Vodka Sauce with Sausage

This easy spicy sausage vodka sauce in it for tons of flavor and spice! The recipe is simple and has just 12 ingredients including the pasta. Feel free to mix this up with different styles of sausage or types of canned tomatoes. To serve, I love a loaf of no-knead bread and side greens salad. YUM.

Are we ready for a delicious, amazing, foolproof, use-everytime-we-entertain pasta? Yes, yes we are.

I love love love vodka sauce pasta. I mean, REALLY I love all pasta that has a creamy sauce, and vodka pasta is almost always creamy. This version is simple and uses bulk sausage for a meaty, spicy addition. Vegetarian vodka sauce pasta is delicious, to be sure, but there's just something about the addition of sausage that amps it up even more, you know? I love it.

This sausage vodka sauce recipe is one of my favorite weekend/holiday meals, and it's perfect for the colder months of the year - maybe even for New Year's Eve if you're staying in! It takes a bit of time because the sauce gets roasted in the oven, but the steps are simple and the results are SO worth it.

Ingredients

For the sauce, we have spicy sausage, tangy vodka and tomatoes. Onions and garlic, absolutely. After the sauce roasts we pink it up with heavy cream and toss it with pasta or zoodles if you like a gluten free or lower carb version! Honestly the sauce is so good I could eat it plain.

(ps if you're into all kinds of pink pasta sauce, I have two vegetarian versions: a plain 2-ingredient pink pasta sauce and pink pasta with spinach. both are super yum!)

Ingredient Notes:

• Sausage - I use spicy sausage but feel free to use mild, either bought in bulk or with casings removed.
• Onion, garlic, crushed red pepper, and oregano add flavor.
• Vodka, tomatoes, and heavy cream make the sauce. I like to use crushed tomatoes that are canned in puree for extra sauciness, but any canned tomatoes you have and like to work with will do great here - even tomato puree or tomato sauce.
• I serve this with any short pasta I have in the cabinet and parm on top. Jay douses his with extra crushed red pepper flakes because he doesn't like to taste his food, but I think the spice from the sausage and red pepper flakes in the sauce is perfect.

Step By Step Instructions

Choose a large ovenproof skillet for the sauce with a lid, and preheat it to medium-high. This is my favorite Staub braiser! At the same time, preheat the oven to 375F.

Add the sausage and brown it in the skillet, breaking it up as you go with a spoon. While the sausage is cooking, chop the onion and mince the garlic.

When the sausage is cooked through and crumbly (8 minutes or so), add the onion, garlic, oregano, and crushed red pepper to the skillet. Stir the veggies and spices into the sausage for 5 minutes to soften the onion.

Add the vodka, and let it reduce by about half. This removes most of the alcohol from the sauce and intensifies the flavor.

Next, add the tomatoes, water, salt, and sugar to the skillet. Stir the sauce together (it'll be thin at this point), cover the pan, and place the whole thing in the oven.

Roast the sauce for an hour at 375F. During this time I prep the pasta by cooking it to al dente, saving some of the cooking water, and measuring the heavy cream. That way, when the sauce is done roasting I can EAT.

Pro Tip: The point of saving some of the cooking water here is to be sure that we have something starchy to add back to the sauce in case it reduces too much in the oven. This isn't a bad thing at all; it actually intensifies the flavor of the sauce, but having that extra pasta water ensures that we'll have enough sauce for all the pasta. Scoop out some of the water with a mug or ladle right before you drain the pasta.

When the sauce has roasted, the liquid will have reduced a good bit and the tomatoes will be dark in color. This is where the magic happens, too: the flavors meld together and are just so savory and comforting after this hour in the oven.

Taste the sauce and add a few pinches of salt if needed - it may absorb some of the flavors in the oven. Add the pasta and cream to the sauce, stir to combine everything, and done!

Taste one more time and add more salt if you'd like, or a few splashes of pasta water if the sauce is overly thick. It should coat the pasta with just a bit leftover in the bottom of the skillet.

Yeah yeah yeah DINNER IS SERVED.

Parm + crushed red + any herbs for sprinkling if you'd like. Garlic bread for dunking obviously because that sauce allllll needs a home.

Make Ahead and Serving Notes

Because of the cream, this is perfect served right away. It's great heated up too, but really the most perfect immediately out of the oven. The sweet tomatoes and cream are perfect with the spicy sausage, and heartiness of the sauce from the fatty sausage is just so perfect this time of year.

To make this in advance, make the entire sauce right up to the end, leaving out the cream. The roasted sauce can be frozen for months or kept in the fridge for about 4 days. Before serving, reheat in a skillet, add pasta water and the cream, then finish the dish with freshly cooked pasta and parmesan cheese.

I want this for NYE, the Super Bowl, and every snow day for the rest of my life. And then once on that random weekend in spring that gets cold one more time before real warm weather.

Enjoy this! It is so simple but really special and yummy.