Sausage and Tomato Rigatoni

I really enjoy the Kraft Food and Family magazine. It always has beautiful pictures and yummy simple food. It's free to get so be sure to sign up if you don't get it already!

This week I tried the Sausage and Tomato Rigatoni. Mat really liked it and he is not a huge red sauce fan so I know it was a keeper.

Original Recipe found HERE.

Sausage and Tomato Rigatoni

4 cups rigatoni pasta (8 oz.), uncooked
1 lb. Italian sausage, cut into chunks
1 red onion, sliced 1/4 cup
tomato paste
1/4 cup KRAFT Sun-Dried Tomato Dressing
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup KRAFT 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese

COOK pasta as directed on package.

MEANWHILE, brown sausage in large nonstick skillet; drain. Stir in onions and tomato paste; cover. Cook 15 min. or until onions are tender and sausage is cooked through, stirring occasionally. Stir in dressing.

TOSS sausage mixture with pasta. Sprinkle with parsley and cheese.
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After reading all the reviews I decided it needed a little bit of tweaking.

First of all I used Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage. It had plenty of flavor, no need to use the full fat stuff here. I found it at Wal-Mart in the meat case with the other turkey products.

I prefer to use Whole Wheat pasta when I can. I have found this awesome tasting brand Bella Terra at my local Schnucks that we both like so no need to not use it! But just use whatever brand you like best.

I had a regular onion on and hand and no parsley so I just used what I had.

The tomato paste I picked up said "With roasted garlic" so I figured it would just be even tastier.

Wow, that seems like a lot of tweaking ingredient wise but it really wasn't! Promise!

Now for the recipe. I cut my sausage on an angle so I would get more surface area for browning. I used a tiny bit of olive oil so it wouldn't stick, put the pieces in and let them sit there for a few minutes. Don't move them around constantly. If you let them sit there they will get nice and brown and brown = flavor! Flip and brown the other side. I then took out the sausage out of the pan. I didn't have anything really to drain just a small amount of "brown bits" in the bottom of the pan so I took my sliced onions and threw them in to get a little softened. I always think onions are better if you cook them a little first before adding them to a sauce. I also threw in a TBSP of chopped garlic just because I can.

When the onions were tender I added the can of tomato paste. This is where I took some of the reviewers suggestions and added a can of water with the tomato paste. I really think it needed it otherwise it is just too thick. Once I had the onions, garlic, tomato paste and water combined well I stirred back in the sausage, a few good shakes of italian seasoning and let it all simmer together for about 15 minutes until the flavors were all combined and the sausage was throughly cooked. Then I stirred in the dressing and added the pasta to make sure everything was coated well.

We added the Parmesan on top of our bowls of pasta.

YUM.

I know this explanation was really long but most of you will see it was just more "method" then recipe.