By ERIN SHAW
The Top Ingredient To Simplify Any Meat Sauce
If you're in the mood for pasta with meat sauce, but time is of the essence, consider reaching for Italian sausage in addition to, or instead of, ground meat.
Traditionally, sweet and hot Italian sausages are heavily seasoned, and almost all the seasonings used to flavor them are perfect for Italian-style meat sauces.
Depending on how much fat you want in your sauce, you can exclusively use the sausage or mix it with some kind of lower-fat ground meat — like ground turkey or lean ground beef.
Buying raw Italian sausage is best, as you can brown it like ground beef. To avoid cutting the casing and squeezing everything out, consider buying sausages without the casing.
Most sausages contain fats, so you can brown them without adding butter or oil to the pan. Then, pour out some of the rendered fat and mix the browned meat with marinara sauce.