Pasta With White Sausage Sauce
Recipe: https://recipestripper.com/recipes/6619cb9a-3767-4c45-963e-290b56e1a2da
Original source: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/5443-pasta-with-white-sausage-sauce

Pasta and sausage are a combination that usually suggests a dense, heavy tomato sauce. But it can also mean the very opposite. Sausage, used in small amounts, can contribute to a relatively light, almost delicate pasta sauce. In fact, sausage is a gift to the minimalist cook: it comes already seasoned, and its seasoning can be used to flavor whatever goes with it. The technique is simple. It's easiest to start with bulk sausage, or patties, because then there's no need to remove the meat from a casing. (Though that is easy to do: Just slit the casing with a sharp knife and peel it off.) You crumble the sausage into a little melted butter, which adds smoothness to the final sauce (omit it if you prefer), add water or other liquid and finish with grated Parmesan.
Yield: 4 servings
Total time: PT20M

Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon butter
- ½ pound sweet or hot Italian sausage (if using link sausage, remove it from the casing)
- ½ cup water, white wine or red wine
- ½ pound cut pasta like ziti
- ½ cup or more freshly grated Parmesan
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Instructions
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta.
2. Put the butter in a medium skillet over medium-low heat. As it melts, crumble the sausage meat into it, making the bits quite small, ½ inch or less. Add the liquid, and adjust the heat so that the mixture simmers gently.
3. Cook the pasta until it is tender but not at all mushy. Reserve about ½ cup of the pasta cooking water.
4. Drain the pasta, and dress with the sauce, adding a little of the reserved cooking liquid if necessary. Toss with salt, pepper and Parmesan, and serve.