Easy Weeknight Dinner: 5 Simple Ingredients
This easy weeknight dinner recipe requires little effort and only five simple ingredients. It’s truly the easiest, quickest, and most delicious meal. All you need for this Italian comfort in a bowl is rigatoni, pasta sauce, pre-cooked chicken sausage package, frozen spinach, and shaved parmesan cheese. Thanks to the flavor of the sausage, no spices are even necessary – and trust me, I’m the queen of spices. This recipe proves that deliciousness does not need to be complicated or time-consuming.
Using the pre-cooked chicken sausage makes prep easy. I don’t know about you, but I absolutely hate trimming and chopping raw chicken. With that, the pre-cooked sausage route is a welcome change. Speaking of welcome changes, how fun is this tea towel from Ciao La Bella Vita?
Now, you must be getting hungry, so let’s hop into the easy weeknight dinner recipe:
Easy Weeknight Dinner: 5 Simple Ingredients
Equipment
- 1 Medium/Large Pot
- 1 Large Pan
- 1 Mini Casserole Dish or Microwave-Safe Bowl
- Utensils
Ingredients
- 1 Box Rigatoni
- 1 Package Pre-Cooked Spicy Italian Sausage Get 'pre-cooked' sausage, not raw! If you're not a fan of the Spicy Italian or can't find it, you can swap for any other kind of pre-cooked sausage. Sometimes I use Old Neighborhood's Spicy Italian Sausage, and other times I use Al Fresco's Chicken Sausage varieties. They ALL taste good!
- 1 Jar Pasta Sauce I often use Classico's Fire Roasted Tomato and Garlic. I've also used their creamy tomato version, and that was delicious too!
- 1 Box Frozen Chopped Spinach
- 1 Sprinkle Shaved Parmesan Cheese The shaved parmesan in the fancier cheese section of the grocery store is always worth it! It makes everything look and taste gourmet.
Instructions
- Bring the medium/large pot of water to a boil.
- While waiting for water to boil, chop up the pre-cooked sausage.
- Drizzle a little olive oil in the large pan and add the sausage on low/medium.
- Follow microwave instructions for frozen spinach, placing it in a mini casserole dish or microwave-safe bowl with a splash of water for about 7 minutes.
- Move sausage around in the pan to keep from burning. The sausage is already technically cooked, so this is really just to heat up and brown.
- Once water is boiling, add rigatoni and follow instructions for cooking time, cooking slightly al dente.
- Once the sausage is browned, drain any oil left in the pan.
- Add the jar of pasta sauce to the same pan with the sausage in it.
- Add the cooked spinach to that same pan and stir.
- Add a small splash of water into the sausage jar, shake it up, and dump the splash into the pan. Stir. This extends the sauce and gives you more!
- Now you have your sauce mixture! Feel free to add any spices here (i.e. Italian blend, ground pepper, garlic powder). However, you really don't need spices since the sausage is so flavorful.
- Drain the pasta once the timer is done.
- Bon appetite! You're ready to serve. Place cooked rigatoni in a bowl, top with the sauce mixture, and sprinkle the shaved parmesan on top.
- For storage, I highly recommend keeping the pasta and sauce mixture separately. If combined, you'll find the pasta soaks up all of the sauce!
If you’re looking for other meal ideas, check out more of my other recipes below:
Dabble Daybook is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, ShareASale, and LikeToKnowIt, affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products. Dabble Daybook was also gifted the tea towel from Ciao La Bella Vita.
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