Sausage and Cheese Baked Orzo with roasted broccoli
Rice-shaped orzo pasta bakes in a flavorful sauce for this dish that is super creamy and topped with melted cheese. Thanks to feedback from our members, we made this one-pan meal, featured in January 2018, even simpler.
Ingredients
- Broccoli - 12 oz, florets
- Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped
- Oil, cooking - 1 Tbsp
- Lemon juice - 2 tsp
- Garlic - 2 cloves, chopped
- Oil, cooking - 1 Tbsp
- Sausage, Italian raw - 8 oz
- Tomato paste - 3 Tbsp
- Italian seasoning - 2 tsp
- Pasta, uncooked orzo - 1 1/2 cups
- Tomatoes, diced and preferably fire-roasted (14 oz / 397 g) - 1 can
- Stock, any type - 1 cup
- Cheese, shredded Swiss - 4 oz
Nutrition Facts
Prep
- Broccoli / Garlic (for pasta and broccoli) - (If prepping right before cooking, get oven heating first.) Prep as directed. Store separately. (Can be done up to 5 days ahead)
Make
- Heat oven to 400F / 204C degrees.
- Toss broccoli and garlic with oil (portions for broccoli) and season with some salt and pepper. Spread out on a sheet pan.
- Roast broccoli until tender and starting to brown in spots, shaking the pan halfway through cooking, ~25 minutes.
- While broccoli roasts, heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add oil (portion for pasta) and sausage. Cook sausage, breaking it apart with a spoon, until starting to brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Drain off any excess oil.
- Stir in tomato paste, garlic (portion for pasta), and Italian seasoning. Saute for 1 minute.
- Add pasta, tomatoes (including liquid), and stock, scraping up any brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Bring to a simmer.
- Top pasta with cheese and cover with a lid. Transfer to oven. Bake, covered, until pasta is tender, 13 to 16 minutes.
- When broccoli is finished, squeeze lemon juice over top.
- Serve pasta with broccoli on the side. (If you have some parsley leftover from earlier in the week, you can sprinkle some on top of the pasta.) Enjoy!
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Reviews
This meal has 13 reviews
Added some kale! This is one of our faves!
The teens loved this. Grown ups thought it was good too
Our family really enjoyed this. At first I questioned using swiss cheese, but I followed the recipe and as usual it was delish. I used beef stock (a little more than a cup) that was leftover from another meal and instead of just broccoli added in some cauliflower. We compared this Orzo Bake to an easy lasagna meal. :)
The broccoli was so good and my kids loved it. The pasta sauce was just ok. This was a little bland for our tastes.
it's not a one-pan meal if you have us bake the broccoli separately...
Very quick and easy! The sauce was just okay but the pork could have had a seasoning mix on it. Broccoli was good roasted. Added some avocado and apples on the side.