3 Incredibly Quick & Easy Pasta Sauces

Welcome to this weeks Substack. With Christmas a week and a bit away, obviously Christmas food is on a lot of peoples mind. But you don’t want to be constantly eating turkey in December, so this week we’ll be looking at some really quick, comforting pasta sauces you can make from scratch when you’re tired from all the festivities and want something easy and delicious (which isn’t roasted!)

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3 Really Easy Pasta Sauces

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These are meals to make when you don’t have the energy to cook anything. They’re all just as easy and take as much time as heating up a jar of pasta sauce, but are so much tastier, and also often cheaper and don’t contain a lot of the ultra-processed ingredients you’ll find in various jars and packets of sauce.

To make the most of these you’ll want some high quality dried pasta. Don’t be fooled by price, some ‘premium’ brands (like Napolina) are no better than the cheapest pasta you’ll buy, instead go off protein content. You want a pasta that has about 14g of protein per 100g (low quality brands will be around 5-6/100g). If you go for this you’ll get a pasta with a much nicer bite and flavour and the sauce will cling a lot more evenly to the pasta.

To cook pasta well every time, bring a large saucepan of water to the boil (larger than you think), then salt it really well (I used a good 3 pinches of maldon salt for a pan). When the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook until al-dente. When cooked, use a slotted spoon to remove the pasta from the water and transfer to the sauce. This means you still have some starchy pasta water available to add to the sauce if needed. The starch in the water helps emulsify the sauce creating a lovely velvety texture

Creamy Sausage Pasta

This is a take on penne alla vodka. Though the vodka really is optional, it supposedly makes the flavour more intense, but I’m not sure you can notice too much difference

The big hack here is taking the skin off the sausages, this means you can cut them up and make little sausage meatballs. When buying the sausages you want a really high quality brand. Cheap sausages are filled with gums, plant proteins various bulking products like rusk, flavourings and colourings. The best option is always some freshly made butcher sausages, but unfortunately these can be hard to find in a lot of the UK. Luckily a lot of supermarkets stock Heck 97% pork sausages, these are the best quality I’ve found that are easily available. Though they are still sausages so will never exactly be healthy, they contain a much larger proportion of real food than the cheaper varieties.

To make things easy, I haven’t chopped the garlic here, instead I just crush it, take off the skin and put in the whole clove. Just be careful to remove it before serving otherwise you’ll end up with a very garlicy bite!

Creamy Sausage Pasta (serves 1)
80g dried pasta 
1 small onion (chopped)
1 garlic clove (crushed and skin removed)
2 high quality sausages (skin removed and cut into chunks)
1 tbsp olive oil
50ml cream
50g tomato puree
1 tsp chilli flakes 
1 tbsp vodka (optional)

Bring a large pan of water to the boil, salt like the sea and add the pasta
Heat the oil in a pan on a medium heat 
Add the onion and cook for a minute 
Add the sausage and garlic and cook until the sausage is brown and cooked inside (use a thermometer to check)
Add the tomato purée and chilli, stir and cook for a minute
Add the vodka and cook for a minute
Add the cream and stir
Transfer the cooked pasta into the pan (you want a bit of pasta water to come with it to help emulsify the sauce)
Stir well, plate and enjoy

Salsa di Noci (walnut sauce)

This is one of those dishes that once you’ve had it, you can’t believe isn’t more well known. It’s like a nuttier, creamier pesto, and is so incredibly easy to make.

If you have time, it’s well worth toasting the walnuts in a dry pan for a few minutes before using, it will really bring out the nutty flavours and elevate the dish to the next level.

You want to blend this until it’s a nice smooth, but thick consistency. Depending on your blender this might take a couple of minutes. Ad first it will seems quite loose, but keep going and the sauce will thicken up.

To serve, just mix with pasta (add in a splash of pasta water if it seems a bit thick), then top with some pieces of walnuts and a good grating of parmesan on top. You could also serve this as a dip, or on some bread as a nutty take on bruschetta.

Salsa Di Noci (walnut sauce) (serves 2)
200g walnuts (ideally toasted in a dry pan)
3 tbsp olive oil
30g Parmesan
150ml milk
Squeeze of lemon
Pinch of salt

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until you have a thick, creamy sauce 
Add to cooked pasta, stir well and enjoy

Cacio e Pepe

This is a traditional Roman pasta dish, and is one of the absolute easiest things to make, it’s a lot of butter and cheese so isn’t the healthiest recipe, but it’s so comforting and a real treat on a cold winters evening.

The traditional recipe calls for pecorino as opposed to parmesan, but I prefer the sharper, stronger taste of the parmesan.

This recipe uses a lot of pepper, if you can it’s worth measuring out, since 1/2 a tablespoon is a lot of turns of a pepper mill.

The big tip here is to not stir the sauce until the cheese has melted. This will ensure the cheese is evenly distributed in the sauce rather than coagulating into balls.

Cacio e Pepe (serves 1)
80g dried pasta
30g butter
1/2 tbsp black pepper
25g grated Parmesan

Add the butter to a pan on low-medium heat, when it’s melted add the pepper and cook for 30 seconds
Add a splash of the pasta water and cook until emulsified
Transfer the pasta into the pan and stir well
Turn the heat to low, add the cheese and don’t touch until the cheese has melted
When the cheese has melted, stir well to combine, serve and enjoy

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I'll be back next week with more

Jerome