I made the Pioneer Woman's one-pan sausage pasta. It's my new go-to weeknight meal.

2 hours ago 1

New Follow authors and never miss a story!

I made the Pioneer Woman's creamy one-pan pasta with Italian sausage and mascarpone.
The simple recipe used pantry staples and took less than an hour to make.
I made enough that, as a single person, I could eat leftovers for multiple days.

There's nothing quite like a cozy, no-fuss pasta dish to warm up a chilly fall or winter night.

Ree Drummond, better known as the Pioneer Woman, has built a following around her simple, hearty family recipes.

But even as someone cooking for one, I've found many of her dishes are perfect for meal prep and quick, satisfying weeknight dinners.

On one particularly hectic evening, I tried her one-pan Italian sausage pasta and discovered it's the ultimate easy comfort meal for busy nights.

Here's how to make the Pioneer Woman's one-pan pasta with Italian sausage.

Ree Drummond's recipe for creamy Italian sausage one-pan pasta requires a few basic ingredients.

To make Drummond's recipe for one-pan creamy sausage pasta for six, you'll need:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing
1 medium onion, diced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
A pinch of red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and black pepper
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
One 28-ounce can of tomato puree
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 pound fusilli pasta
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup mascarpone
Shaved Parmesan
10 to 12 fresh basil leaves

Drummond recommends using fusilli pasta for this dish, but you can substitute it with any pasta shape you prefer or have lying around.

And while this may look like a long list of ingredients, you may already have most of them in your kitchen.

I started by dicing a medium-sized onion and a few cloves of garlic.

There isn't too much prep that goes into making this pasta dish, which also made cleanup a breeze. I only needed to wash my cutting board and the skillet I used to cook the pasta.

After prepping my vegetables, I heated the olive oil in a pan and added the sweet sausage meat.

I allowed the sausage to slightly brown in my large nonstick skillet while breaking it up into smaller pieces with a wooden spatula. I found it was easiest to break up the sausage meat once it had been slightly cooked.

It took about five minutes for the sausage to slightly brown.

I then added the diced onion and cooked it until it became translucent.

It took another five minutes for the onions to cook and fill my kitchen with a heavenly scent.

I then added the seasonings and the garlic.

The recipe requires fennel seeds, oregano, and red pepper flakes — all staples I already had tucked away in my pantry. This made the prep process even easier.

I stirred everything together, using the oil from the sausage to brown it all. I also added salt and pepper to enhance the flavor even further.

I then added the ingredients for the tomato sauce and the uncooked pasta noodles.

The recipe calls for low-sodium chicken broth, tomato puree, and tomato paste to make the sauce. When I first added the ingredients, I was nervous the sauce would end up too liquidy.

After cooking the pasta noodles in the sauce for about 20 minutes, it thickened up.

I loved that I didn't need to use an extra pot to boil water or cook the pasta separately. Everything came together in a single pan, which made the whole process incredibly efficient.

Not only did this save me time, but it also meant fewer dishes to wash — no extra pot or colander required.

For someone cooking after a long day, that kind of simplicity made a huge difference and took the stress out of making a busy weeknight dinner.

After the pasta had fully cooked, I removed the pan from the heat and added a cup of shredded mozzarella cheese and the mascarpone.

This is how Drummond's "creamy" Italian sausage pasta gets its name — after adding in the cheese and mascarpone, the sauce became even creamier, with shreds of cheese pulling and swirling throughout the pasta as I stirred it with my spatula.

The final result was a comforting, unbelievably easy pasta dish that I'll make time and time again.

Drummond recommends garnishing the dish with shaved Parmesan cheese and basil leaves for added brightness.

The pasta was creamy and savory, making it the perfect one-pan meal for a busy weeknight.

The sauce, which was creamy and strongly flavored with cheese and marcarpone, clung to the noodles, while the hints of fennel seeds and red pepper flakes brought out the savory flavor of the Italian sausage.

I loved the ease of this one-pan recipe — being able to cook the pasta noodles in the same pan saved me time and cleanup, and I was impressed by how simple the instructions were to follow.

In fact, it was so simple I'm sure I could recreate this dish from memory next time.

With its rich flavors and effortless cleanup, this recipe proved that a weeknight dinner can feel indulgent without being complicated.