Spicy Sausage and Broccoli Pasta

This pasta packs a serious punch – the bright lemon combined with spicy sausage and charred broccoli creates complex flavor from just a few ingredients. Plus – it comes together in thirty minutes! 

The process and ingredients are so simple, and also endlessly swappable. Compared to some of our recipes (like Crispy Falafel (Pan fry, air fry, or bake!) or Pulled Pork for Everything – AKA Alex’s 11 Hour Pork) this recipe requires very little commitment or planning.

Cooking Process

Browning the Spicy Sausage Properly

Patience. We need patience to get this right. I had a roommate in college who was an excellent cook (seriously, think made from scratch Armenian delicacies) but always complained that when she tried to make grilled cheese it didn’t get crispy. The problem was, she cooked grilled cheese only when she was already too hungry to make something else and would flip it after only a minute or two, before the bread had a chance to crisp up properly! My point is, the patience we are going to practice browning this sausage applies to grilled cheese as well.

You will be so glad you let this pork get deeply browned before disturbing it. For the best results, I add the sausage to the pan when it is already hot, flatten it out to get as much contact with the pan as possible, and wait until it is frying in its own fats to touch it again. From there, I flip big sections of it and let it sit a few more minutes before starting to break it up into the crumbles that you want for this pasta. For sausage, which has a higher fat content, there is no need to add oil to the pan. If you’re ever browning something lean, like lean ground pork or turkey, we recommend adding a light coating of oil to the pan after it has heated.
If you’re still not sure what I’m talking about and care enough to do further reading, maybe Claire Saffitz’s guide to properly browning meat is a good read.

Reserving Pasta Water

If you follow as many food writers as I do, you have definitely heard the advice to add some pasta water to your sauce to make it silkier and help it bond to the pasta more easily. Honestly, it sometimes feels like an old wive’s tale to me and is not something I grew up doing, but it really does make a difference. In a recipe like this, where the “sauce” is really just an emulsion of the olive oil and sausage drippings with lemon juice that lightly coast the pasta, the pasta water makes it all come together. When you’re using a pesto, the starchy saltiness of the pasta water also works like magic and extends it to eliminate the need for too much added oil.

For this recipe, I ladle some of the pasta water into a measuring cup on the side and add it slowly when stirring the pasta and sausage together. If you add too much, just leave it simmering for a minute until the water evaporates. The end goal for this pasta is to have every piece of orecchiette just lightly coated, so you shouldn’t have extra water or oil pooling in the pan.

Ingredients Notes

Broccoli – Fresh verses Frozen

I prefer fresh broccoli for this recipe, because I think the texture holds up to give a little more bite and I love the crisp edges when it chars during a high heat roast. Frozen broccoli, though, can be exceptional when roasted well and can still offer a great contrasting texture. When I roast frozen broccoli, I do everything the same but roast for a bit longer to make sure it gets those crisp edges. 

Looking for something a little different? You could swap in broccoli rabe (also called rapini), which is a popular vegetable in similar dishes that we’ve enjoyed at restaurants. The bitterness of the broccoli rabe adds another layer to the overall dish but frankly, we don’t keep broccolini on hand and actually have a hard time finding it.

Pasta Choice

This recipe calls for orecchiette, or ‘little ears’, a pasta that originates from the Puglia region of Southern Italy where it is made by hand every day. I am obsessed with the stories about Italian grandmothers in Bari, Italy who make and sell their fresh orecchiette in the side streets of their city every day and wish I could use theirs for this recipe. I have actually made my own, using Pasta Social Club’s recipe and a technique she shared on her Instagram. It was super easy, required no special tools, and was absolutely delicious… but it’s a special occasion project for me.

If you don’t have orecchiette or can’t fine it at the store, you could absolutely swap for another pasta shape. I would recommend using another small pasta shape like radiatori, gemelli, or fusilli and if you can get fresh pasta that would be the best option. Because this recipe is so simple, having a high quality pasta with a little more chewiness makes a huge difference.

Hot Pork Sausage

We use a spicy sausage that comes uncased, making it easy to crumble and brown. If you can’t find it like this, you could buy your favorite sausage and take it out of the casings to cook the same way.

If you want to mix it up, you could use chorizo or italian sausage, it all depends on your preferences!

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