Sausage and Sauce Over Noodles
Shelf-stable Italian sausage, tomato powder, and quick noodles. A slow-cooker dinner compressed into one pot.
- calories
- 760
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 127
- protein
- 32 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 12 min
- total time
- 17 min
- water
- 600 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- Canoe / raft
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dry-cured Italian sausage | 3 oz | a hard salami-style stick, not fresh links |
|---|---|---|
| Tomato powder | 1/4 cup | stands in for the jar of sauce |
| Quick-cook pasta | 2.5 oz | angel hair or small shells, under 6 minutes |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Italian herb blend | 1 tsp | |
| Sugar | 1 tsp | cuts the acid the way jarred sauce does |
| Salt | 1/2 tsp | |
| Grated hard cheese | 2 tbsp | the shelf-stable shaker kind |
Method
- Slice the sausage into coins. Thin, or it stays chewy.
- Boil 600 ml of water. Add the pasta and the sausage coins together and cook until the pasta is just soft, about 5 minutes.
- Do not drain. Kill the heat, then stir in the tomato powder a spoonful at a time so it does not clump.
- Add the oil, garlic powder, herbs, sugar, and salt. Stir and let it sit two minutes to thicken.
- Shake the cheese over the top.
The original runs six hours in a slow cooker, which is a machine for making tough sausage tender. Cured sausage arrives already tender, so the long cook has nothing left to do and the whole thing collapses into one boil. The tradeoff is fat: a hard salami stick renders less into the sauce than raw links, hence the tablespoon of oil.
Tomato powder replaces the 24 oz jar and cuts roughly a pound and a half of water out of your pack. It thickens fast, so add it off the heat and off the pasta water you kept — that starch is what gives the sauce body. The sugar is not a garnish. Jarred sauce almost always has some, and without it the reconstituted tomato reads sharp.
Packing
Tomato powder, herbs, garlic, sugar, and salt go in one small bag as a sauce mix. Pasta in its own bag. Sausage stick stays whole until camp so it does not sweat oil into everything.
Variations
- Dried mushrooms or a handful of dehydrated onion, added with the pasta, bulk it up.
- Crushed red pepper if you want the hot-sausage version.
- Swap the sausage for a foil packet of chicken and add it at the end.
https://mealswithmaria.site/italian-sausage-crock-pot-recipe