Friday, June 13, 2014

Day 1: Dinner: Italian Sausage and Cheesy Tortellini

 Okay, here is my first attempt at trying something new (both cooking it and tasting it)! I’m assuming this will largely be a trial and error blog housing all my cooking mishaps and first attempts. Round 1! 

Cheese Stuffed Tortellini is on the list of foods I really like, but up until now I have never experimented with it. I would typically pan fry or bake a lightly seasoned chicken breast to go with the lightly oiled tortellini—extremely boring, I know!, but it was something I knew couldn’t go wrong so I never ventured away from it. I don’t know what flavors mix well together and I don’t know how to spice up the few ingredients I like cooking with.
So, tonight I decided to give the Cheesy Sausage Tortellini recipe I found on Pinterest a try for dinner!

This recipe called for a smoked sausage of some kind, but I am not a fan of regular sausage and decided to use Italian sausage instead. In hindsight, opting to use Italian sausage was probably one of the worst ideas I have had in awhile. I’m not sure I have ever tried cutting nice slices of Italian sausage before, but it was definitely a feat or patience and strength. :(  I ended up with gobs of Italian sausage that I smashed down to resemble slices. Oh well, you live and learn. I don't see why using crumbled italian sausage wouldn't work for this recipe

And the verdict: the boyfriend loved it! and I didn't hate it! I think I now realize italian sausage is something I only like when I'm really in the mood for it, and I wasn't tonight. But he flavor of the sauce was amazing! And the noodles absorbed some of this amazing flavor so they definitely tasted WAY better than my usual tortellini dinners. I would definitely make this again, and the boyfriend actually requested I do so!

If I were to remake this I would either omit the Italian sausage, unless I'm really in the mood for it or try the sausage that was originally called for. If I stuck to Italian sausage I would probably cook it how I normal do (browning and cooking crumbles). 

This is what I did:
Italian Sausage and Cheesy Tortellini



This recipe only has 7 ingredients and took only 30 minutes to make!

What you will need:
  • 2 tbsp of olive oil
  • 2 tsp of minced garlic
  • 3 Italian sausages (in hindsight I probably should have just used the entire pack)
  • 1 cup of tomato sauce
  • 1 ½ cups of chicken broth
  • 1 cup of heavy whipping cream
  • 1 pack of Buitoni three cheese tortellini

Ready. Set. Cook!

1. Heat oil in a large pan. While it is warming up, slice Italian sausages (they end up becoming blobs but just smash them into a slice looking shape—I suppose crumbled Italian sausage would have been just fine as well)



2. Place sausage slices in the hot pan in a single layer



3. Cook until golden brown on each side (I should have timed this! :( it wasn’t very long, maybe 2 minutes )

4. When the other side turns golden brown too, add the minced garlic and stir around until aromatic. I dumped out about 2 tbsp of the oil/grease before adding the garlic to the pan. I don't know if this needed to or should've been done, I'm not skilled enough to call that one, so I just thought I'd add that info here.


5. Add chicken broth, tomato sauce, cream, tortellini, salt, and pepper and stir. When I put the tortellini in they were still frozen, I'm not sure if they were supposed to be or not, but they cooked in the sauce and reached the normal point I cook them to.


6. Cook until tortellini is al dente and the sauce is hot.




7. Serve in warmed large bowls. This made 2 large bowl servings, but we only ate half (I suppose that means 4 servings)


Enjoy! :D

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