A quick and easy meat sauce with enticed depth of flavors ready to cap off your favorite pasta! This Sweet Piquanté Peppers Tomato Sauce with Italian Sausage is ready to devour in less than 30 minutes!
I’ve gotta say, this sweet, but tangy, and not too tomato-ey meat sauce can be a meal all in itself.
Oh, I love my pasta. But sometimes, I’d rather inhale this sauce all by itself.
Spoonfuls straight from the skillet.
It’s that good!
I’m sure you have those nights where you want a hearty sauce (made from scratch) to pour over some simple pasta… but who really has the time to simmer the flavors together for hours– on a weeknight?? Not I.
With this meat sauce, the flavors begin to fuse together the moment all the ingredients are in the skillet.
No big pot and no long simmer time.
This particular sauce recipe all started with using up my recent stash of delectable sweet piquanté peppers…
I find myself always making sure I can stuff as many of these sweet cherry tomato shaped peppers in a little snap shut container from the olive bar. Or, you could find them in a jar on a shelf near the fancy olives.
The sweet peppers and tangy tomatoes really do add the perfect balance to this sauce.
- 1.5 pounds ground sweet Italian sausage (or your choice of ground meat)
- 1 small white onion, diced
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 14 ounces sweet piquanté peppers, cut into halves or quarters
- 6 ounce can tomato paste
- 1 (28 ounce) can whole (or diced) tomatoes, do not drain the juice out.
- 1/2 cup chicken broth (water and chicken bouillon can be substituted for canned broth)
- 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
- 6 fresh basil leaves (or 2 teaspoons of dried basil)
- 2 teaspoons dry rosemary, crushed
- 2 teaspoons dry marjoram (or use dry oregano)
- 1 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar (to balance the acidity of the tomatoes)
- salt and pepper, to taste
- In a large skillet pan on medium heat, start to brown the meat. When the meat is half cooked, add to it the diced onion, crushed garlic cloves and cut piquanté peppers. Cook all together until meat is fully cooked and browned.
- Stir in the tomato paste to coat the meat mixture.
- Add the canned tomatoes (with the juice), chicken broth, Italian seasoning, rosemary, marjoram, sugar, salt and pepper. Stir until combined. Bring heat to a medium-low and simmer for 5-8 minutes. Serve over your favorite pasta or use this sauce for bread dipping!
- Makes about 3.5 cups of sauce. It's great for leftovers, too!
For more sauce recipes to top your pasta, try these creations…
This Lemon Peppered Garlic Cream Sauce is the perfect sauce to add a little zing to any pasta!
The pasta creation possibilities are endless with this Parmesan Cream Sauce! Try layering it into your lasagna.
Use both a cream sauce and this red sauce to layer them between some tender pasta!
[…] prepping this little dish even faster– substitute the pizza sauce for this easy tomato sauce you made from a previous […]