The Dorm Chef

Baked Potato Soup with Andoullie Sausage

Last week, my girlfriend and I went to an Italian restaurant to eat lunch.  I won’t say what restaurant because I didn’t particularly like my meal and I don’t want to bash anyone, but I did have an amazing soup before my meal came out.  It was a roasted garlic potato soup and it was undoubtedly the best part of the meal.

Now, I’ve always liked potato soup, something which I think started from eating chunky soup when I was younger.  Obviously from there, the soups I’ve tried have only gotten better over time, but I had never made one before.  The soup I had last week made all that change.  I couldn’t resist the urge to my hand and give potato soup a go.

Also, if you like this, check out my other potato soup recipe.

Ingredients:

6-8 medium potatoes

16oz andoullie sausage

2 cups milk

2.5 cups chicken broth

1 can cream of chicken

1 can cream of onion

1 cup of shredded cheese

Salt

Pepper

Garlic Powder

Optional Ingredients:

Any type of sausage

cream of whatever you’d like

Ingredients used in this recipe

Step 1) Peel the potatoes and cut them in 1/2 inch cubes and put them in a large pot and cover them with water.  Turn the stove top on high and let water come to a boil.  Add a little salt to the pot to give the potatoes some flavor.  Let boil for about 20 minutes.  You’ll know if they’re done if you can take a spoon and slice a potato in half with ease. When done, turn the stove top off.

Boiling Potatoes

Step 2) Chop up the sausage in small little pieces, similar in size to the potato.  I cut the link in half, and then in half again, then cut the 4 slices of sausage into little cubes.  Throw this all in a pan and brown the sausage.  Shouldn’t take any longer than 10 minutes.

Cooking Andoullie Sausage

Step 3) Once your potatoes are done, drain all the water from the pot leaving just the potatoes.  Take about 4 cups (half of the cooked potatoes) and put them in a bowl and mash them up.  Leave the other potatoes in the pot you cooked them in.

Mashing the Potatoes

Step 4) Throw your milk, cream of onion, cream of chicken, and chicken broth back into the first pot with the rest of the potatoes.  Stir a little bit just to mix everything up.  You’re not trying to mash the rest of the potatoes you started with.  Now throw in your mashed potato and your sausage and stir again. Now is when you can throw in all your seasonings.  I put a lot of garlic in mine because I wanted it to taste garlicky.   Turn the stove top back on to medium and continue stirring the mixture so all of the potato and sausage don’t stick to the bottom.  I let it cook for about 30 minutes.

Everything together

Step 5) Turn the stove top off after 30 minutes and let the soup sit for about 10 minutes.  I found it gets a little thicker after sitting for a while.  Now serve in a bowl and pour about a tbsp or two of shredded cheese on top.  Enjoy!

Oh Snap! This dish was amazing, easily the best thing I’ve made so far. I went grocery shopping with my mom and sister this past weekend and I was thinking of things to cook during the week. At the time I pictured myself cooking onions and bell peppers with a nice chicken breast in the oven, but when it came time to make dinner last night I just wasn’t feeling it.

Instead I decided to use the stew meat (beef cut into chunks) instead of the chicken, and I wanted to do the whole thing on the stove top in a pan. When I started making the dish I decided to eat the beef, onion, and pepper mix over a bed of rice and peas, but as I was cooking and the smell overcame me I couldn’t allow myself to waste any of the gravy in the pan. I decided to just throw the brown rice and peas into the pan and let it absorb all of the gravy. It was a great decision! Like I said earlier, this was the best thing I’ve made yet.

The best thing is that I’m pretty sure I could make this in the dorm as well. At the end of the post I’ll tell you what to do if you want to make this without an oven.

Ingredients:
8oz of stew meat (any type of cubed beef)
1 medium green bell pepper
1 large onion
1 cup of Brown rice
1 can of no salt peas (8.5 oz)
4 tbsp of butter or margarine
1/3 cup of water
1 tbsp Tony Chacheres
1.5 tbsp of Kitchen Bouquet browning sauce
1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
2 tsp of black pepper
1 tsp of cayenne pepper

Optional Ingredients:
Other sliced vegetables
white rice
Noodles

Ingredients

Step 1) Throw one cup of brown rice, two cups of water, and the can of peas into a dish and microwave it for 20 minutes or so, until all the water is gone.

Cooked rice and peas

Step 2) Take a pan and turn the stove top to medium-high heat. Chop up your onion and pepper into thin long strips. Throw them into the pan and put the butter on top. Stir and let cook for about 15 minutes or until the onion and pepper are a golden color and are no longer hard.

Cooked onions and peppers

Step 3) Season your meat and throw it into the pan as well. Try to move the onions and pepper aside so that the meat can be touching the bottom of the pan. Just throw the onions and pepper on top of the meat. Let cook for about 10 minutes and then add your browning sauce. Stir the pan to make sure everything is nice and mixed.

After the meat is thrown in

Step 4) By this time your rice and peas should be done. Pour the mix into the pan and add the water. Stir so that everything becomes mixed. Turn the stove down to medium, cover the pan, and let cook for about 10 minutes.

After the rice is thrown in

That’s it! Everything should be done now.

Now, if you want to make this using a microwave, here is how I would do it.

Step 1) Microwave the rice and peas same as above.

Step 2) Throw your seasoned meat into a separate, larger bowl and microwave it until it is completely cooked. Not sure how long this would take. I’m thinking about 15-20 minutes, just make sure to stir the meat every 5 minutes or so since the microwave cooks unevenly.

Step 3) Throw your onion, bell pepper, and butter into a third bowl and microwave until the onions and peppers are a golden brown color. I’m thinking at least 10 minutes, but I don’t know as I haven’t tried it yet.

Step 4) Mix all three bowls into one large bowl (hopefully one of the three was large enough to handle everything together) Throw in your browning sauce and water in as well and stir thoroughly. Stick back in the microwave for about five more minutes.

Done! I just want to say that I haven’t tried the microwave steps yet, that is what I would do in the dorm room though, feel free to make adjustments. Just make sure the meat is cooked, that is the most important step.

The other day I was out shopping with some friends and I knew I was going to be heading home after we were done so I thought it would be a great opportunity to just go all out and spend the rest of the afternoon making a great meal. I thought for awhile about what I wanted and I finally decided I wanted a huge piece of meat, so that is just what I got!

I have never even made brisket before much less tried one on a George Foreman grill. I wasn’t too sure it would even cook since it was so thick, but I bought it and decided to try it out anyways. Once I got home I got online and looked at a few recipes to get an idea about what people used to season the meat with. In the process I quickly realized that most people slow cook a brisket over a long period of time, which had me a little worried. I decided to just go on and try it anyways.

It actually turned out pretty amazing. This was probably the best piece of meat I’ve cooked on the grill so far.

Ingredients
- beef brisket (~32 oz)
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 1 tsp garlic
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 3/4 cup brown sugar

Optional Ingredients
- any seasoning you want to use really

This dish will make about four – five servings, depending on how big the portion is. I also have recipes for the sweet potatoes and the rice that can be found on the site in previous posts.

Step 1: Cut your brisket into manageable sizes. I cut mine into about six different pieces so that they would grill up quicker.

Chopped up brisket

Step 2: Throw your brisket into a bowl and throw in all the seasoning with it. Rub the seasoning on the meat and try to evenly coat all pieces of meat. Don’t be afraid to get a little messy! Wash your hands when done.

Seasoned pieces of brisket

Step 3: Turn on your grill and wait about five minutes until it heats up. Throw a few pieces of meat onto the grill. I was only able to fit about two pieces at a time because of my grill size. My brisket was about an inch thick and it took about 25 minutes to cook completely through. I flipped it over every five minutes or so, which probably isn’t necessary in a George Foreman grill, but the bottom side of the grill always seems to cook faster than the top, so I flip it anyways.

Step 4: Take the brisket off of the grill and allow to cool for about five minutes before cutting it. This will keep the juices inside. Now serve with whatever sides you’d like and enjoy your meal!

Grilled brisket - don’t cut them like this, see the juices? You want that to stay inside the meat!

Note: As I was cooking the brisket I was cutting them in half so that I could check if it was done, but this allowed all of the juices to come out of the meat. I didn’t think much of this at the time because as soon as I put the meat in a tupperware container, all the juices were coming out and tasted amazing when you pour it back over the meat. But when I went to heat up the left overs later, the meat was pretty dry. So try to avoid cutting the cooked brisket until about five minutes after it’s done cooking.

Sorry, I know a lot of you wanted easier recipes to follow, but I just really wanted brisket. I have a lot of good stuff coming up. I’ve been trying to find interesting casserole dishes to try out and I also have a lot of ideas for yummy side dishes. I’ve also started trying to find recipes that don’t require any cooking at all. So hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll have some simpler stuff thrown in the mix.

Sweet potatoes are pretty awesome, they are basically the candy of vegetables in my opinion. Aside from their great taste, sweet potatoes are known as a superfood, which basically means that they are very healthy.

I think I love this dish so much because this is another thing my mom makes only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter. It really isn’t all that difficult to make either, which is good news for all of us! Typically, this would be made in an oven, which would add a crispy texture to the dish, but unfortunately that isn’t an option for us.

Ingredients:
- Sweet Potatoes ( ~15oz can)
- Marshmallows (1 cup)
- Brown Sugar (3/4 cup)
- Butter (2 tbsp)

Optional Ingredients:
- Pecans (chopped, 1/2 cup)

Ingredients

Step 1: Open up the can of yams and drain all of the syrup from the can. Dump the yams into a microwavable dish. try to break apart some of the yams, but try not to mash them up into a paste (I made this mistake and that is why my final product looks the way it does)

Step 2: Throw your butter and brown sugar into the container and mix with the yams.

Step 3: Throw the marshmallows on top of mixture and spread out evenly. If it looks like too much or not enough, adjust accordingly. The marshmallows should just cover up the sweet potato mixture.

I mixed my marshmallows in with everything else

Optional Step: If you are using pecans, throw them in before you throw the marshmallows in.

Step 4: Place dish in the microwave for about 3-4 minutes. Once the marshmallows are melted, it’s done.

Step 5: If you let it sit for awhile, the marshmallows might harden a little and form a kind of crust on the top, but I didn’t even bother with it. I just stirred it all up together, it still tastes the same, just not as presentable.

Fresh out of the microwave, still bubbly

Enjoy!

Well, it seems as though people are enjoying the simpler recipes so far, so I’m going to try and post more of these from now on. This one really is about as easy as it gets. It involves cutting a few things up and then throwing them on the grill, and that’s about it.

Ingredients:
- two links of sausage
- one whole onion
- mayo
- two slices of bread
- 2 tbsp of butter (optional)

Ingredients

Step 1: Cut your sausage links in half and then split them down the middle. You should have about eight even sized pieces of sausage now.

Step 2: First, peel the onion (how to peel an onion) and cut it in half. Now start cutting each half of the onion in thin slices and break it apart as your going.

Chopped onion and sausage

Step 3: If you want to, throw one tbsp of butter on your George Foreman grill and then throw half of the onions on as well. Now throw the sausage on top of the onions and close the lid. After about five minutes open the lid and flip the sausage. After about five more minutes you can take the onion and sausage off of the grill

Step 4: repeat step three for the remaining onions and sausage

Grilled Sausage and Onions

Step 5: Put the mayo on your two slices of bread. take about a quarter of your onions and throw them on one slice of the bread. Take two pieces of the sausage and put them on top of the onions. Place the other piece of bread on top of the sausage and enjoy!

Finished

Hope this one is simple enough for everyone. If you don’t have a GF grill and rather use a pan, just throw the two tbsp of butter into a pan and throw all of the onions in as well. Set the stove top to medium-high heat. Cook for about a minute, making sure to stir the onions. Now throw the sausage in as well and brown on both sides. When the sausage is a nice dark brown color and the onions are caramelized you can take it all off of the heat.

Hope this one was simple enough!

Make sure to check out my other sausage recipes(spaghetti, jambalaya) as well as my other sandwich recipes (ham egg and cheese)

If you ask any of my friends whether or not I have an adventurous personality, they would most likely say no, but that ended as of this weekend. This is the second time in as many days that I’m trying out a brand new recipe. This one is even crazier than the Jambalaya recipe from yesterday. At least with that I had previous experience making Jambalaya, I had just never made it in a microwave before. But I can honestly say I’ve never made any kind of potato soup, much less heard of one with these specific ingredients. This was definitely a risk, and while it might not be for everyone, it actually turned out pretty stinking awesome!

I think if I make this again I would probably use diced potatoes instead of sliced potatoes. The sliced potatoes were kind of thick and didn’t break down very well. I’m thinking diced potatoes would have broken down a little better. Maybe I didn’t cook it long enough? Not sure. I really can’t complain too much though, I originally planned to use the potatoes and spinach as a side dish, but I started rethinking it before I made it. It turned out fine as it is though, please feel free to play with the recipe and let us know how it goes.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups of Fat Free Milk [$0.60]
- Cream of Chicken Soup (11oz can) [$0.82]
- Whole Leaf Spinach (13.5oz can) [$0.54]
- Sliced Potatoes (15oz can) [$0.58]
- Three large slices of Deli Ham [$1.00]
- 2 tsp Onion Powder
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Black Pepper
- 1 tsp Salt
- Large tupperware dish (8-14 cup/ 2x 6-8 cup)

Optional/Substitute Ingredients
- 2 cups of any kind of milk
- Cream of Mushroom
- Diced potatoes instead of sliced
- You can cut your own potatoes as well if you’d like
- Any kind of turkey or ham would probably go well with this, doesn’t have to be deli slices

Ingredients

This recipe will make around 4 servings depending how much you eat. Total cost comes out to about $0.71 per serving and you really can’t beat that. This is about 1/4th of the price of similar soups (I’m looking at you Chunky soup!)

Step 1: Get out a plate and shred the ham with a fork and a knife. I basically did this by folding the ham a bunch of times and then sticking it in the middle with the fork. Take your knife and stick it between each set of prongs on the fork and cut it horizontally. Now cut vertically on either side of the fork. Your ham should be in pretty small sized chunks now, which is what we’re shooting for. Throw the sliced ham into your tupperware dish

Chopped up ham

Step 2: Open and drain both the spinach and potatoes. Throw both into your tupperware dish. When I made it a little while ago, I stopped here, but I’m thinking it would have been a good idea to try and chop the potatoes into smaller pieces. If you got the diced potatoes, don’t worry about it though.

Potato, spinach, and ham in the dish

Step 3: Open your cream of chicken soup and pour it in the dish.

Step 4: Add your two cups of milk to the dish.

Step 5: Now add all of your seasonings and stir to spread out everything evenly.

Step 6: Put the dish in the microwave for 10 minutes. Take it out and stir every 2 or 3 minutes.

Step 7: Take out and let the dish cool down for about 5-10 minutes. Now pour into a bowl and enjoy!

This picture doesn’t do it justice

Like I said earlier, I think this dish is pretty flexible. You can try cooking it longer if you want, maybe that will result in the potatoes being more mushy, making the soup thicker. I think it turned out fine as it is though, but it’s all up to you in the end. Since this one turned out pretty well I think in the future I’ll experiment with potato soups using other ingredients like cheese, bacon, chives, sour cream, crab, crawfish, ground beef, etc (not all at once of course). I’m thinking I’ve really got something with this one.

I’ll admit, this was an adventure for me because I had not tried this recipe until today, so I really had no idea how it was going to turn out in the end. Taste and quality wise, I was aiming for somewhere between the boxed jambalaya meals and the home cooked dutch oven variety. I knew it wouldn’t be quite as good as the latter, but I was pretty sure it would be better than the former. I did mess up a little bit along the way and I wanted to point that out to everyone so that you all don’t make the same mistakes, but feel like I met my goal in the end.

“Great, he can’t even get this right, why should I try it?” Well, mine came out just fine, it was just a little over seasoned and a little over cooked. Both of those mistakes could have been corrected had I taken my time to do everything correctly. Which is something I wanted to point out as well. If you are trying to cook this super quick, you might want to quit while you’re ahead and go buy the boxed variety and throw it in the microwave, because this probably took me about an hour to prepare and cook. The upside, however, is that I could make about 10 servings of this in one batch if I wanted to (though this recipe is only for 4). So please, take your time, follow the instructions if you want to get the most from this recipe

One last note. I was able to make such a large batch because I went out and purchased a 14 cup tupperware dish. It cost around $6.00 and I feel it was WELL worth it. I can now make huge batches of everything I cook, meaning I don’t need to cook as often. It also gives me a lot more options because now I don’t have to worry about anything spilling over the side when I stick it in the microwave. So while this isn’t necessary, and the recipe below only filled about half of the container, I wouldn’t recommend trying the recipe if you don’t have at least a 10 cup tupperware dish or something similar in size.

Ingredients:
- One link of hot pork sausage cut up into 1/2 inch chunks (5.5oz) [$1.52]
- One chicken breast sliced up into 1/2 inch chunks. (5.5oz) [$1.25]
- Three cups of white rice [$0.93]
- One can of reduced sodium chicken broth (14oz can) [$1.22]
- 1 tsp of pepper
- 2 tsp of garlic
- 2 tsp of onion powder
- 1 tsp of tony chacheres (or season all)
- 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper
- 2 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 tbsp of your favorite hot sauce
- 14 cup tupperware dish

Optional/Substitute Ingredients
- One link of any sausage, andouile, duck, etc
- Shrimp in place of chicken
- brown rice in place of white rice
- vegetable or beef broth instead of chicken

Ingredients
(Ignore the chili powder, I didn’t use it)

This recipe will make about 4 servings or so. Total price excluding seasoning and tupperware dish comes out to only $1.23 per serving! If you throw in a vegetable side dish of some kind you could probably stretch it out to 5-6 servings.

Step 1: Start out by pouring your three cups of rice into the tupperware dish and run it under some water for a little while to get some of the starch out. Make sure to empty all of the water out of the dish when you’re done. Obviously the rice will still be damp, that is fine, we just don’t want a ton of water because it will mess up the next step.

*Note*
Now, It’s a rule when cooking jambalaya that you want 2 cups of liquid for every cup of rice that you put into the pot (or tupperware in this case). So we need six total cups of liquid to add to our rice. I keep saying liquid because we are going to use chicken broth as well as water. This just gives it a better taste. Normally we would cook the chicken and sausage in the same pot that the rice and water go into, but this isn’t the case for us so we are making up for it with the chicken broth.

Step 2: Pour the whole can of chicken broth into your dish. This comes out to be around 2.5 cups of liquid I believe. Then add 3.5 cups of water.

Step 3: Now is the most important part of the recipe!! This is where I messed up today, so please follow these steps. Begin seasoning with your tony chacheres and worcestershire sauce. Next pour in your garlic powder and onion powder. NOW, take a spoon and taste the liquid. The uncooked rice won’t hurt you (this is another reason why you washed the rice earlier). Does the liquid taste like something you would want to eat? If so, stop seasoning here!!! Remember that you want the liquid to be a little salty because the rice will absorb some of it during cooking. If you think it needs some more pepper (which I definitely require in my jambalaya) then start slowly pouring the cayenne, black pepper, and hot sauce into the liquid. Make sure to put a little bit of each at a time! You can always add more but you can’t take any out

My rice after seasoning

As you can see from this picture, I didn’t follow my own directions. I put all the seasoning in at once without trying it as I was going. This resulted in crazy-spicy jambalaya that was tasty, but a little much even for me. I also didn’t pour the liquid into the rice first, which I should have done as well.

Step 4: Cut your chicken and sausage into 1/2 inch chunks and throw them on your George Foreman grill for about 10-12 minutes. Make sure to check them every few minutes to make sure they aren’t burning.

Cut up Chicken and Sausage

Step 5: Throw the chicken and sausage into your rice/water mixture and put it into the microwave for about 20 minutes. After about 10 minutes I would take it out briefly to stir it up. The seasoning tends to stay at the top otherwise. I know you wouldn’t normally do this when cooking Jambalaya, but this isn’t a normal way to cook it, so don’t worry about it.

Step 6: After 20 minutes, let cool for a second and then take a bite of the rice. If it is still hard (uncooked), stick it in for another minute or two. The perfect consistency is for the rice to come out soft and slightly wet. Once the rice starts cooling off it will absorb a little more of the liquid. So if cook it for 25 minutes until the jambalaya is very dry straight out of the microwave, it will end up even drier in about five minutes, and you don’t want that!

After coming out of the microwave

Step 7: Pull out a plate, serve, and enjoy!

Like I said, I made a few mistakes along the way and that is the main reason why this post is so long. I love this recipe and I want everyone to enjoy it, so I’m trying to describe in as much detail as possible so yours will turn out even better than mine does.

So as you can see, I’m trying to get a little bit crazier with the names of my recipes. I don’t know how much you could really consider this a Cajun dish since I’m using Mexican hot sauces, but we’ll ignore that for now. For those of you who don’t know, the Cajun Two Step is a traditional Cajun dance similar to the country western two step, but none of this really has anything to do with the recipes except for the fact that this great tasting chili can be made in only . . . you guessed it, Two Steps!!

Ingredients:
- 7.5oz Hormel Chili with NO BEANS
- 7.5oz Tostitos Salsa con Queso (half of the jar)
- Frito Lays Scoops
- Black Pepper
- Cayenne Pepper
- Tony Chacheres
- Garlic Powder
- Onion Powder
- Chili Powder
- Any hot sauce you can get your hands on

Ignore the Kashi cereal, we won’t be needing that this time

Optional/Substitute Ingredients:
- 7.5oz of any chili
- 7.5oz of velveeta or any other soft cheese
- Any chip really, goes best with corn chips
- Pretty much any seasoning you can imagine

Step 1: Pour out the chili and cheese into a bowl or tupperware dish. If you want, add a few slices of velveeta cheese as well. Season generously with whatever seasoning you wish to put in it. Stir it all up and make sure the seasonings aren’t all bunched up in one area of the chili.

Doesn’t the chili look great fresh out of the can?

Step 2: Place the bowl in the microwave for about 1 and a half minutes on high. Take out and stir and cook it for another minute. Take out and let cool for two - three minutes.

That’s it! Whip out the chips and enjoy.

Finished Chili

As I’m sure you can tell, this is a VERY flexible recipe. You can throw just about anything in a chili and it probably wouldn’t taste that bad. I know some people love putting beans, tomatoes, cream cheese, etc, but I was never a fan of that. I always just stuck with the simple stuff. I find that the more you over complicate the dish the easier it is to mess it up.

Lastly, I realize I put “The Dorm Life” on all of my pictures. Sorry about that. It’s 1:45 in the morning and I’m too tired to fix it. Hopefully this won’t take away from your yummy chili.

This sandwich is a great tasting and healthy way to start your morning. I saw a picture of a sandwich similar to this in the book Eat This, Not That: The Supermarket Survival Guide. There is just about everything you need in a meal between the two pieces of ultra healthy bread. Tons of fiber, protein, and dairy make this a quick and guilt free breakfast.

Ingredients:
- 3 slices of thin cut ham
- One slice of Velveeta cheese
- Half a cup of Egg Beaters
- Two slices of Double Fiber Wheat bread
- Salt and Pepper or Tony Chacheres
- Tablespoon of Milk

Optional Ingredients:
- Hot Sauce
- Spinach
- Tomato

Step 1: Pour the half a cup of Egg Beaters into a small bowl or tupperware dish and season it with the salt and pepper or Tony Chacheres. Add the tablespoon of milk so that the eggs aren’t too dry, stir the mixture together. Cook the egg beaters in the microwave for 1 minute and thirty seconds. Take out and stir the eggs and then place it back into the microwave for 1 more minute. This step is very important otherwise the eggs will not be fully cooked in the center.

Step 2: Let the egg cool for about 30 seconds and then place the egg patty on the first slice of bread. Put your slice of cheese on top of the egg so that the cheese can melt just slightly. Then top it off with your 3 slices of thin cut ham. Finally put your last slice of bread on top of the ham and enjoy your amazing sandwich.

Optional Step 3: If you do choose to put the spinach or tomato on the sandwich, make sure to put the spinach between the cheese and the egg and put the tomato between the ham and the top piece of bread. I don’t know exactly why, but it always seems to taste better this way.

Optional Step 4: If you have a George Foreman grill or sandwich press, throw it on for about two minutes so that the bread is nice and toasty.

-1/2 lb of spaghetti
-your favorite Ragu Pasta Sauce
-fresh Italian sausage
-salt and pepper

(makes one hefty or two normal servings)

My recommendations for ingredients:
-1/2 lb of whole wheat spaghetti
-Ragu Robusto Parmesan & Romano Pasta Sauce
-fresh Hot Italian Sausage

Step 1: Take your 1/2 lbs of spaghetti put them in a tupperware dish. Cover them completely with water and set in the microwave. I always either put a paper plate or paper towels underneath the tupperware because the water does tend to boil over the top from time to time. For 1/2 lbs of pasta I usually set the microwave to 14 minutes on high.

Step 2: For some reason it seems that everytime I cook pasta in the microwave I end up with the tupperware being covered in some kind of sticky substance. I’m not really sure what it is, but I’m thinking its some weird by product of the starch being cooked by the microwave. Don’t worry though, I usually just run water over the pasta and put it either in a new tupperware dish or a microwavable bowl.

Step 3: Take one or two links of sausage from your package and take a fork or knife to poke holes in the casing of each sausage. This will allow a lot of the grease to come out when cooking. Throw them on the already heated George Foreman grill and allow to cook thoroughly for around 8-10 minutes. Your sausage might be a little crispy on the sides that are touching the grill, so if you have the time you can grill them for probably around 20 minutes or so without putting the top of the grill down. I really don’t mind the crispiness though and I usually just go for the quicker route.

Alternative Step 3: If you don’t have a George Foreman grill you can always get precooked sausage instead. I don’t mean hot dogs either, look at a package of any kind of sausage and if it is precooked then it will state it on the label. This just means that the sausage is already cooked and it really only needs to be heated up in order to eat. So all you have to do for step three is take out a link or two of sausage and pop it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes. I would definitely poke holes in the sausage here as well. I know a microwave cooks things from the inside out, so you don’t want any exploding sausages on your hands.

Step 4: Once the sausage is done grilling I usually take it out and cut it up into quarter inch pieces and throw it on top of the pasta. I then put about a cup of the pasta sauce and pour that on top of the spaghetti and sausage.

Step 5: Stir everything up together and put it back in the microwave for about a minute. This will allow the sauce to heat up and also pick up some flavor for the sausage.

Step 6: You can cover with some Parmesan cheese if you have any, though it’s not necessary.

Enjoy!