Search

Join Culinate! Login or Register

Join Culinate

With a free Culinate membership, you can:

Create your own recipe collections
Queue recipes for later use
Blog your culinary endeavors
Be part of our online community of cooks
And much more…

Join Now

Spaghetti Sauce with Chicken Sausage and Swiss Chard

By Carrie Floyd, from the Culinate Kitchen collection

Total Time

1 hour

Introduction

When I was a kid, my mom made spaghetti at least once a week, because it was a dish we all liked. This is my variation, enhanced with lots of fresh vegetables and chicken sausage instead of ground beef. I use a mix of bulk Italian chicken sausage — one-third hot, the other two-thirds mild — but feel free to alter the ratio to your own taste. Besides spaghetti, this sauce is also good with penne, shells, and fettucine; I’ve also used it making lasagna.

Ingredients

	~	Olive oil
	1	small onion, chopped
	2	carrots, peeled and diced
	2	celery stalks, diced
	1	bunch chard, stems and leaves chopped separately
	1	lb. Italian chicken sausage
	1	can (28 ounces) whole peeled tomatoes, chopped, juice reserved
	1	can (6 ounces) tomato paste
	1	tsp. oregano
	¼	tsp. ground fennel seeds (optional)
	~	Salt and pepper
	~	Honey (optional)

Steps

Cover the bottom of a large pot with olive oil. Heat to medium and cook the onion until it turns translucent. Add the carrots, celery, and Swiss chard stems, and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften.
With a wooden spoon, move the vegetables to the outside circle of the pot, add more oil if necessary, and add the sausage. Cook the sausage, breaking it up with the spoon, until it is no longer pink.
Add the tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato paste, oregano, and ground fennel seeds. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked through and the flavors have melded.
Five minutes before serving, stir in the chopped Swiss chard leaves and cook until wilted. Taste sauce and season accordingly with salt and freshly ground black pepper, adding a spoonful of honey if the sauce tastes too acidic.

Notes

Turn this into a hearty vegetarian marinara sauce by omitting the sausage.

For tips on re-using leftover sauce, read Carrie Floyd’s column on surplus cooking.

This content is from the Culinate Kitchen collection.

Culinate Kitchen

Italian Sausages with Polenta and Tomato Sauce

Jamie Oliver’s Meals in Minutes

Pregnant Jools’s Pasta

Zanne Miller

Crab in Marinara Sauce

Culinate Kitchen

Sugo di Carne

Think before you type

Culinate welcomes comments that are on-topic, clean, and courteous. For the benefit of the community we reserve the right to delete comments that contain advertising, personal attacks, profanity, or which are thinly disguised attempts to promote another website.

Please enter your comment

Comment

I recommend this recipe

Format: Bare URLs are automatically linked; use this style: [http://www.example.com "place text to be linked here"] for prettier links. You may specify *bold* or _italic_ text. No HTML please.