Sausage broccoli orecchiette

9 ingredients•Prep: 5 mins•Cook: 30 mins

Yakir Havin

•

June 3, 2026

A quick dinner that includes meat, pasta, and veggies all in one spoonful? Sign me up. The critical technique to getting this pasta right is mixing the pasta with pasta water and the olive oil and sausage fat to create a creamy sauce. Tossing in a pan is the best way to achieve this, but mixing with a spoon will do just fine as well.

3–4 servings

Instructions

Chop broccoli (1 head) florets and stem into bite-sized pieces, and mince garlic (4 cloves).
Blanch broccoli for a minute or two in a pot of salted water and remove, but keep the pot on the stove.
Start cooking the orecchiette (454 g) in the same water used for the broccoli.
In a separate pan, break the sausage (454 g) links into small chunks and brown very well in olive oil (1 Tbsp). Arrange the chunks on one layer of the pan and let them get nice and seared, before turning over.
Mix in minced garlic (4 cloves) and red pepper flakes for a minute.
Deglaze the pan with white wine (50 mL), and reduce most of the way.
If not using white wine, the pasta water can be used to deglaze in the next step.
By this time, the pasta should be mostly done. Reserve pasta water, transfer pasta to the pan, and start mixing well to start emulsifying the sauce, using pasta water bit by bit as needed. In addition to the olive oil, the sausage will have released its fat into the pan. Mixing these fats with starchy pasta water will create a creamy sauce.
Add the broccoli florets into the pan to warm them through, and add nutritional yeast if using to give a cheesy flavour and help emulsify the sauce.
Once you have mixed enough to achieve a creamy consistency, serve up.