Cheesy Turkey Sausage Pasta

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This one-pot cheesy turkey sausage pasta isn’t your traditional mac and cheese with hotdogs recipe; trust me when I say, it’s so much more. This recipe can be made in 30 minutes and even has some veggies hidden in it (diced tomatoes and onions). I’d suggest doubling or tripling the recipe and adding some to your freezer; this comfort food makes a great freezer meal that reheats well in the microwave!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• It’s so easy to make. It takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish.
• It’s delicious. Your kids will be asking for more!
• It has veggies (and you’re kids might not even notice)! This pasta dish includes diced tomatoes and onions.
• It’s a great freezer meal. It’s easy to double (or triple) this recipe and freeze the excess. Reheating from frozen in the microwave yields great results, so it’s great to have on hand when you’ve forgotten about dinner or don’t want to cook.
• It’s budget-friendly. One batch of this recipe serves 4-6 and costs around $8.00. You heard me right, 8 bucks for a batch of this. Even if you eat the entire batch by yourself, it’s still cheaper than takeout.

Ingredient Notes

• Turkey Sausages – I used one package of Johnsonville Turkey Cheddar Smoked Sausages. These turkey hotdogs are delicious on their own and they are a great addition to this dish!
• Diced Onion – I recently discovered that you can buy frozen diced onion! This is a game changer for me because I hate dicing onions! (That’s one convenience I don’t mind paying for!)
• Garlic – I used minced garlic (that you buy in a jar) for this recipe. It’s just so much easier than peeling garlic and getting out the garlic press.
• Chicken Broth – I used low sodium chicken broth, but feel free to use regular or no sodium added chicken broth.
• Pasta – I used elbow macaroni in this recipe because I wanted my kids to recognize it as “mac and cheese.” Feel free to use whatever pasta you have on hand (penne also works well!)
• Diced Tomatoes – I used a can of plain diced tomatoes, but you can also use Rotel if you want to add a little spice to the recipe.
• Heavy Cream
• Cheddar Cheese – I use grated Sharp Cheddar cheese in this recipe.

How to Make Cheesy Turkey Sausage Pasta

This pasta is super easy to make!

You’ll get started by dicing the turkey cheddar sausages. I diced mine into slices that are about 1/4 of an inch thick. If you’re going to make several batches, I’d suggest cutting multiple sausages at the same time.

Next you’ll add olive oil to the pan you’re going to use (if you’re making multiple batches, I’d suggest using a Dutch oven or soup pot). In the images below, I made a single batch in my 12″ HexClad saucepan and it fit perfectly. Turn up your burner to medium heat and let the oil and pan heat up for a couple of minutes.

While the oil and pan are heating, get the rest of your ingredients ready. (By ready, I mean set them next to the burner you’re using!) In this recipe, I use frozen diced onion because it’s so much easier, but if you need to dice the onion, this is a good time to do that.

Next you’re going to add the diced turkey cheddar sausages to your pan and let them brown up. You’ll want to stir them every once in a while so they don’t burn. For me, this process took about 6-8 minutes.

At this point, you’ll add in the diced onion to the pot. I keep the burner on medium and allow the onions to soften and brown up a little while stirring. This takes between 1-2 minutes.

Next, you’ll add some 1/2 tsp of minced garlic and while stirring, allow it to cook for about 30 seconds. I wish you could smell how good my kitchen smells at this point – it’s sooo good. I use refrigerated minced garlic because it just makes things easier (are you starting to see a trend here?)

At this point, the magic is going to happen. You are going to dump in the chicken broth, cream, can of diced tomatoes, and uncooked pasta. GIve it a good stir and wait for the mixture to boil. When it starts boiling, turn down the heat to medium-low and cover it with a lid. Your going to allow the mixture to simmer for 15 minutes (if you’re planning to freeze it, you’ll want to cook it a little less, about 12 minutes is good). During that time, you’ll want to stir it every once in a while.

After the mixture is done simmering, you’ll stir in the cheese! You can garnish with finely diced fresh parsley and grated cheddar cheese (if desired). I’d suggest serving this with this easy 2-ingredient garlic toast.

Freezing this Cheesy Turkey Sausage Pasta:

If you’re planning to freeze this recipe, allow it to cool. Then add it to quart sized freezer bags. One batch of this recipe serves between 4-6 people, so I typically split this recipe up into 3-quart sized freezer bags. I’ve found that one quart sized bag feeds 2 adults a reasonable portion (roughly 400 calories per serving).

Before freezing, I would suggest you gently flatten out the contents of each freezer bag and stacking them on top of each other. This makes it easier to store them in the freezer AND makes thawing faster. Below you’ll see the 3 flattened bags that have already been frozen.

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention freezing this recipe in a gallon sized bag. To be clear – you totally can freeze this in a gallon sized bag if that’s what you want to do. The reason I don’t suggest it is because when it comes to reheating this recipe, if you don’t want to thaw it out, you can simply add the frozen block to a rectangular glass baking dish and microwave it. The “quart sized” block generally fits well into small microwaveable baking dishes, I’ve found that gallon sized blocks of frozen food are too big for most baking dishes.

(If you plan to thaw the pasta before cooking, feel free to freeze in any size of bag you’d like!)

When you’re ready to reheat one of these frozen meals, simply cut the bag using a pair of scissors. Add it to your microwaveable glass dish and heat it in the microwave. I found that it typically took about 4-5 minutes to thaw.

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