Simple ingredients, big flavor: Balsamic Mushroom Sausage Pasta

Mushrooms, Italian sausage and balsamic vinegar create an umami-rich, weeknight-quick meal. Recipe below.

WHEN YOU HEAR MUSHROOM PASTA, YOU EXPECT TO SEE MUSHROOMS IN THE DISH. That’s one of the charms of most mushroom dishes, the distinctive shapes of sliced, halved or even whole mushrooms. As you can see above, that’s not the case here.

Instead, this dish leans into what mushrooms really bring to the party: big, earthy umami—that savory deliciousness found in broths and cooked meats. Mushrooms do this so well that, sometimes, when we’re cooking a soup or stew or pot of chili and we want to give it a hit of umami, we’ll stir in a teaspoon or so of Better Than Bouillon Mushroom Base. Done. Well, this dish contains a full pound of button mushrooms for four servings. They’re chopped into 1/4-inch pieces and cooked down, so you don’t see them, but you definitely taste their umami goodness.

Two other big flavors elevate this weeknight-quick dinner. Italian sausage, which often stars in pasta sauces, adds meatiness and a little heat. And a healthy slug of balsamic vinegar added at the end delivers a nice hit of acidic brightness.

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Balsamic Mushroom Sausage Pasta

Mushrooms, Italian sausage and balsamic vinegar create an umami-rich, weeknight-quick meal.

Course Main Course, Pasta

Cuisine Italian

Servings 4

Ingredients

• 12 ounces dry penne rigate or other tubey pasta
• salt (see Kitchen Notes)
• 6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 2 tablespoons butter, divided
• 1 pound white button mushrooms, chopped into 1/4-inch bits
• 8 ounces Italian sausage (mild or hot, see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 large onion, chopped fine (about 1 cup)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste (or more, as needed)
• 1/2 teaspoon or more red pepper flakes (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried tarragon
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Instructions

• Cook the pasta in a big pot of salted boiling water until it is just al dente. Drain it, reserving one cup of the cooking water, and set aside.
• While the pasta is cooking, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter over medium heat in a big heavy skillet or a Dutch oven, until the butter is melted. Add the chopped mushrooms, stir to coat with the oils, and then cook, stirring a bit, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle a teaspoon of salt over the mushrooms, then keep cooking, stirring and turning the chopped mushrooms occasionally, until the liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms start getting that nice golden brown. This should take 6 or 7 minutes. Scoop the mushrooms into a bowl and set them aside for now.
• Put the rest of the olive oil in the pot, over medium-high heat, then add in the sausage and a half-teaspoon of salt. Sauté the meat, chopping it into bits with your spatula, until it is cooked through—this should take 2 or 3 minutes.
• Add in the onion and cook until it's lightly browned (4 to 5 minutes), then add in the garlic and stir another minute or 2. Pour the mushrooms back into the pot, stir everything together, then add the tomato paste, red pepper flakes, paprika and tarragon. Stir everything together and sauté it all until the tomato paste begins darkening—about 2 more minutes.
• Pour in the balsamic vinegar now. Continue cooking and stirring for a few seconds, mixing everything together. If you are using a conventional pan or Dutch oven rather than a nonstick, stir up any browned bits that are clinging to the bottom of the pan.
• Turn down the heat. Add in the al dente pasta and about a half cup of the reserved cooking water, and the rest of the butter. Stir stir stir everything together, keeping an eye on it. Add more cooking water if need be. The pasta will absorb some of the liquid and cook a little more, and everything will thicken up and coat the pasta. Taste to adjust if need be—if your vinegar is especially vinegary, so that the sauce leans a bit too tangy for your liking, you may want to add a bit more tomato paste and stir it through. Your goal is just enough liquidity to allow the sauce to cling to the pasta. This is ready when the pasta is coated with the thick, handsome sauce and everything has a nice glossy look.
• Serve in a platter, or plate individually, topped with a drift of freshly grated Parmesan.

Kitchen Notes

What kind of salt? We have both Diamond Kosher Salt and regular iodized table salt on hand. We grab them somewhat indiscriminately, I must admit. Use what you have on hand, but use a lighter hand with table salt—its granular structure makes it, well, saltier by volume.

Italian sausage, mild or spicy? This dish really sings with a little heat, so spicy’s the first choice. We had mild on hand, so we dialed up the red pepper flakes (see below).

Red pepper flakes. If you use spicy Italian sausage, about 1/4 teaspoon of these flakes will help dial it up a little. If you have mild sausage, 1/2 teaspoon (or more, to taste) will do the trick.

Liz’s Crockery Corner. Marion here. This genteel soup plate is our most recent acquisition, found somewhere in northwest Indiana during our holiday-season wanderings. We usually don't care for things with gold trim—it seems too fussy and not at all in our magpie-bordering-on-tragic style, but something about this plate called out to us, and I am so glad it has joined our home. Verona was a remarkably popular pattern name for flow blue—I've found at least four other Veronas, by an array of makers, mostly made in the first two decades of the 20th century and ranging from Oriental-ish to fairly saccharine floral. This particular Verona was manufactured by Grimwade's Upper Hanley Pottery some time between 1906 and 1911. It's reassuringly familiar, reassuringly discreet—a decorous, nostalgic callback to late-Victorian taste and manners. By the way, Grimwade's was founded in 1885 and is still in operation today under the name Royal Winton. And, speaking of nostalgic callbacks, its specialty today is accurate, fairly pricey reissues of “chintzware”—those intense overall floral patterns that were popular in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.