An easy, re-purposed pasta dish made from leftover pasta, pasta sauce, meats, like pepperoni, smoked sausage or other leftover meats and cheese. Fast and delicious!
Fried Pasta
While you can certainly make fried pasta intentionally using freshly boiled pasta, sauteed meats and jarred pasta sauce, it's really a dish born out of leftovers and wow is it a delicious repurpose!
Although, I've written it out here for you with measurements - which results in about 4 cups pasta, or what I say is two healthy adult sized portions - essentially there's no recipe. Just a good olive oil, butter, leftover pasta and leftover sauce is really all there is to it. Throw in some leftover cooked or smoked sausage, meatballs, pepperoni, shredded beef, whatever you've got.
I used some leftover spaghetti sauce from my semi-homemade recipe and that I had made with half sausage and half ground beef. I also had a little bit of Conecuh smoked sausage left in the fridge, so I sliced that up and threw it in too. I also like a little fresh green onion. Although you can certainly make fried pasta with leftover spaghetti noodles, I prefer to use a leftover short cut style pasta, like rotini or as here, ziti. You could even toss in some fresh sliced mushrooms, even olives if you like!
Full instructions with the ingredient list, measurements and a printable document you can take with you is located in the recipe text further down the page. Just scroll past the step by step photos. Here's how I make my fried pasta.
Although there is certainly onion in my pasta sauce, I like to start off with a little fresh for the leftovers fried pasta too, just a 1/3 cup nicely minced is what I do. When I just have a little bit of chopping to do, I'm happy to use my little hand chopper, so that's I started with here. It works well for a chop, but especially well with mincing.
You just pull the handle until you get the consistency you want and it's easy to clean and stores nicely. You'll find yourself reaching for it often, and, in fact, along with my Fasta Pasta, it's one of my favorite and most used kitchen gadgets for sure! Typically, I would saute onion first, then a quick cook of the garlic with it, but I went ahead and cleaned the garlic and threw it in here as well.
To get a nice browning on the pasta, I also like to start with olive oil and butter. Cook the onion, add the garlic and leftover cooked pasta, leftover smoked sausage, pepperoni, cooked sausage, shredded meats, whatever you've got! Add some green onion, seasonings, a bit of sauce, salt and pepper, and add additional sauce to reach the consistency you like. Generally, you don't want it overly sauced, just enough to moisten the pasta. Top with cheese and pass in a hot oven to melt, or just cover until it's melted.
Dig in!
For more of my favorite pasta recipes, check out the collection on my Pinterest page!
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