Name: Chili Crisp Sausage Ragu Pappardelle
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 30 min
Ingredients: 1 tbsp olive oil; 450g / 4-6 Italian sausages; 100ml / 1/2 cup white wine, dry (optional); 1/2 tsp fennel seeds; 3 cloves garlic; 2 tbsp chilli crisp (Laoganma crisp chilli in oil in UK) plus 2 tbsp for serving; 400g / 14 oz canned tomatoes whole or chopped; 500ml / 2 cups tomato passata / crushed tomatoes; Salt to taste; 450g/1 lbs pappardelle

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Hmm… decisions, decisions. Spicy noodles or pasta? Spicy noodles or pasta? How about both?! Fuse the two together with my chili crisp sausage ragu pappardelle recipe. It’s perfect if you can’t make your mind up, or your family can’t agree. A vivid sauce of tangy tomatoes and chunky Italian sausage with a little heat from Sichuan peppercorns and chili oil, served over broad, chewy pasta, make this a lip-smacking, slurpalicious dish.

Or for a walk on the mild side, Italian sausage pasta with mushrooms is comfortingly creamy and without a tomato or chili in sight.

Close up shot of sausage ragu in a bowl with chilli crisp and Parmesan

Chili crisp pasta

Can’t quite get your head around chili crisp? Let alone chili crisp pasta? Let me break it down for you. Chinese cuisine is a treasure trove of weird and wonderful condiments, and the brand Loa Gan Ma offers up this tabletop wonder pot of Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilies in oil.

You’ve probably seen it stacked in a plastic basket next to the soy sauce, chilli flakes and rice vinegar in your local spit-and-sawdust Thai place and given it a swerve. Mistake!

But don’t be intimidated! It may be a thick paste, studded with chili seeds and a shade of deepest hell red, but it’s actually not that fiery. The chili crisp recipe includes crispy onions giving texture and sweetness, and fermented soybeans serving up rich umami notes. Think tongue-tingling rather than skin removal.

So, what is this Chinese seasoning doing paired up with pappardelle pasta? First, pasta and noodles are essentially the same just geographically different, right? And it’s widely agreed that a dash of chili in noodle soup is a savoury blessing.

Second, chili and iconic pasta dishes are a thing! Think puttanesca or arrabiata.

So, invest in a jar! (You can buy it on Amazon UK for around a fiver.) And almost any recipe you would seed and chop a chili for, you can bust out the chili crisp. Besides pasta and noodles, I add mine to soups, sauces for chicken and even over plain eggs on toast.

Sausage ragu

Ragu is usually a labour of love reserved for a lazy weekend. Tuscan beef ragu is a patient soffritto sauté followed by an hours’ long simmer.

This sausage ragu version on the other hand, is blessedly quick and fuss-free. Cooked on the stove top in under 30 minutes means this recipe is a midweek dinner winner.

While you could use sausage meat and season it yourself, I am all about cutting corners right now and buy Italian sausages. They have a coarser texture than regular sausages and are already seasoned with garlic and fennel making them extra convenient.

Using flavoured ones is a quick hack for added depth to the sauce, but if you can only find plain pork sausages, don’t panic just add extra fennel seeds if that’s to your taste.

And the chili crisp adds an unexpected complexity. Tart with tomatoes and fennel, a hint of its warmth helps to bring the sauce back down to the ground.

Top down shot of chilli crisp sausage ragu in a bowl with a fork topped with Parmesan

Recipe tips and notes

This is fusion cuisine at its best! It brings together the traditional cooking of Italian nonna’s and ancient Chinese masters. Now there’s a cook-off I’d like to witness!
It’s called chili crisp and it is the colour of nightmares, but in actual fact it’s not too spicy. There’s so much more to it thanks to the earthy soybeans and sweet fried onions.
Chili crisp can be bought in big supermarkets or online, but if you have no luck add ½ tsp of dried chili flakes. It won’t be the same, but it will be better than nothing!
A thick and chewy pasta is required to stand up to this robust sauce. I’ve gone for pappardelle, it’s a long, broad, and flat; perfect for ragu. If you only have ridged tubes like penne or rigatoni, they’ll work too.
Italian sausage with garlic and fennel is the one. But if you really can’t source any, be sure to add ½ tsp of fennel seeds to your sausages.
Take the sausages out of their casing and break them into chunks like rough meatballs for evenly saucy and meaty mouthfuls.
You want a good colour on the sausage meat before adding the next ingredients. Let the meat pieces caramelise undisturbed in the pan, don’t bat them about too much!
I recommend buying canned whole tomatoes. They tend to be better quality compared to chopped ones. Then mash them up yourself with a potato masher.
Finally, if the sauce seems too tart, go ahead and add a pinch of sugar.

Process shots of sausages being cooked then added to tomato sauce

Serving suggestions

I would never serve antipasti at a midweek dinner, but I might treat the family to a three-course meal at the weekend. If you’re feeling frivolous, bookend this sausage ragu pasta with low-prep prosciutto caprese parcels to start and amarena gelato for dessert, or salted caramel affogato for the grownups.

Or just serve it up with some crusty sourdough to sop up the sauce, and a green side. A simple green salad or some crunchy and bright lemon green beans. Buon appetito!

Storage and leftovers

While pasta tends not to fare so well in the fridge, sausage ragu with chili crisp does! If you notice a disproportionate amount of ragu to pasta before putting them together, keep some of the sauce back.

It will keep, and gloriously intensify in flavour, for 2-3 days in the fridge. Then reheat on the hob in the time it takes to cook up a fresh portion of pasta.

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