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!
Reviews
This meal has 69 reviews
I thought this was simple & easy. I doubled the recipe. I would put cheese throughout this next time, instead of just on the top.
My kids like spice, so we used spicy Italian sausage and some red pepper flakes in the sauce. I also used a "Pizza Cheese" blend instead of swiss since I'm the only one in the house that likes it. The broccoli was fantastic too. I did have to add a little more stock for the orzo to cook all the way through. This was my first meal in this program. A great start!
I would substitute the cheese for one I like better, my husband didn't mind it.. Also, the spiciness of the fire roast tomatoes was too strong for my kids, so mixed theirs with more cheese and sour cream. Also, I chopped the broccoli smaller and added it to the dish. And my attempt to season my own ground pork does not taste nearly as good as store bought Italian sausage.
This was a great meal. I used some classic and some vegetarian Italian sausage and cut the oil by half, and it was still great. I didn't have an issue with the the orzo cooking through. I used a dutch oven and kept the oven at 400.
Used cheddar Added chilli flakes Added 1 teaspoon salt Added brown sugar to tomatoes Added extra 0.5-1cup or stock (but needed longer to cook, didn’t stick then) Used garlic and herb beef sausage
Very solid meal. Nothing extraordinary, but it'd be hard not to like it.