One Pot Kielbasa Pasta review.

What a change of pace. This is great comfort food. Plus, any time I can cook an entire meal in one pan or pot, well that's just a victory in itself. The recipe is very easy to follow. The one thing I'm starting to realize as I'm going through different recipes is that I prefer when a recipe just calls for 1 onion chopped or 2 carrots cut in 1 inch thick, as opposed to 1 cup of chopped onions or 1/2 cup of carrots slices. It's just a preference but my thought is that those ingredients don't have to be exact measurements, so why give an exact measurement?? Chances are, I'm going to eyeball the onion or carrot or garlic and put in what I think would work out. But like I've said before, that's the beauty of cooking, it's really up to you what you do with the recipe. Ok, off that subject and on to a totally different one. In a few moments I'll give the source of this recipe. Fair warning, be ready to get inundated with ads. This particular page has been the worst with throwing up adds, and they're so intrusive when trying to read the recipe. This isn't the fault of the author by any means, it's just how the web page provider has decided to place the ads. Ok, done with that. Overall, this is a great recipe and it really is just a starting point. There's so many things that can be done with this recipe, it's just a great foundation as it stands. Or, you can really put some imagination in it and come up with some great alternatives.

This recipe comes from Sugar Apron and this is the link to the recipe: http://sugarapron.com/2015/02/15/one-pot-kielbasa-pasta/

This is mine - only seconds before I truly enjoyed it. Like I said, this was delicious. I'm totally calling this a win when comparing the original picture to what I came up with. That's 2 nights in a row where I actually came close to the fantastic pictures in the original posts. There are different methods that could be used to cook this meal, I went with my dutch oven. I would imagine a large sauce pan would work too.

Now my day today was pretty good, but if it was a bad day, I would want to come home to have this meal. It really looks simple but there are so many tastes to be had and they're all just waiting to make you feel better. There are several things I did different and those things were based on the comments I read on the original post and the idea that I'm trying to keep things mostly healthy.

For the comments, one comment suggested they used red bell pepper instead of the tomatoes - Great idea. One comment suggested they used diced tomatoes with chilis - Great idea. So two great ideas, I used both. Diced tomatoes with chilis, and a red bell pepper, the flavors were all over the place. The slight sweetness of the red bell pepper went well with the kielbasa.

For the healthy side, I didn't use heavy cream, I used skim milk. I also used the 2% cheddar cheese and I didn't use near as much. The recipe calls for 1 cup of cheddar cheese to go into the pot after the pasta is cooked. I used about 1/2 a cup (I'm guessing but I'm pretty sure it was about half a cup - like 1 small handfull). One of the reviews suggest that no cheese is needed. The good thing about the cheese is that it helps with the "comfort food" aspect. Plus it thickens up the remaining juices after the pasta is cooked. I also used a turkey kielbasa which is a bit less fat.

This meal will be in the rotation, but maybe some other versions of it. Maybe some shrimp would work in there somewhere. Give this recipe a try and let me know what you did different. New cooking ideas are always welcome.