Italian Sausage Ragu with Rosemary and Red Wine
Let’s make a rich, comforting Italian Sausage Ragu in the Slow Cooker. Bring a bit of Italy into your kitchen with this simple recipe. Just mix a few good-quality ingredients together, then let the slow cooker work its magic. This dish combines hearty sausage with fresh veggies and herbs for a real, homemade taste that feels like a hug in a bowl. Whether you’re looking to impress friends and family, or just want to come home to a bowl of comfort, give this a go and let us know how you get on!
Cooking the Ragu
This recipe starts by frying the sausage meat until it’s nicely browned and crisped in places. This adds flavour, texture and colour. Next, the onions, celery, and carrots are softened, before adding some rosemary, garlic and tomato puree. These steps create the base of your ragu sauce, which will be flavourful and aromatic. The final step in the pan, is to add and reduce red wine. As always, don’t use an expensive red wine! But, do reduce the liquid by half. This step removes the bitterness from the wine and also serves to thicken the sauce.
As all these components combine in the slow cooker, the magic happens. Just before the slow cook end, you just need to prepare some pasta. Stir the freshly cooked pasta into the luxurious, rich ragu. Top it with a sprinkle of Parmesan and freshly chopped parsley.
Pro tips
- Italian sausages: pick a flavour of sausage that you love. We really recommend using Italian sausage that contains fennel. Fennel complements the flavours in this dish beautifully.
- Big pasta shapes: choose a BIG pasta shape that you can scoop all of the sauce up with!
- Use a basic pan: if you use a basic frying pan, the sausage meat will crisp more easily and leave little bits stuck to the pan. These bits will be lifted off when you add red wine. Extra flavour!
Why you’ll love this recipe:
- Rich and comforting: The combination of sausage meat and a rich tomato base with red wine, creates a luxurious sauce. This dish has a depth of flavour that you can only truly get from slow cooking.
- Ease: Preparing the ragu in a slow cooker means minimal hands-on time. You don’t need to keep stirring it, or checking it’s not sticking to the bottom of a pan. You can go about your day while dinner practically makes itself!
- Perfect for batch cooking: You can double up on this recipe, and skip stirring the pasta into the slow cooker. That way you can make a very large batch. Then just split it into portions and store in the freezer to enjoy whenever you want.
Italian Pork Sausage Ragu
Equipment
- Slow Cooker
- Frying Pan
Ingredients
- 400 g Sausage meat or sausages Remove sausages from casing
- 2 tbsp Olive oil
- 1/2 Onion Diced
- 1 Celery Stick Diced
- 2 Carrots Diced
- 2 tbsp Tomato puree
- 4 sprigs Rosemary Finley chopped
- 2 cloves Garlic Minced
- 187 ml Red wine 187m = 1 mini UK bottle
- 400 g Tinned tomatoes
To serve
- 400 g Pasta cooked
- Handful Parmesan
- Handful Fresh Parsley Chopped
Instructions
- Remove the sausages from their casing.
- In a hot pan with a little olive oil, add the sausage meat. Break it apart and stir with a spatula or wooden spoon. Fry until it starts to crisp at the edges, then remove and set aside.
- Turn the heat down to medium. Add a little more olive oil to the pan. Then add onion, celery and carrot. Cook for 3-4 minutes, or until softened.
- Add rosemary and garlic. Cook for a further couple of minutes.
- Add tomato puree. Stir well and cook for a further minute.
- Pour in red wine. Let the mixture bubble until the liquid is reduced by half.
- In the slow cooker, combine the contents from your pan with the fried sausage meat. Add tinned tomato and stir well.
- Cook for 3-4 hours on high, or 7-8 on low.
- Ahead of the slow cook finishing, cook some pasta of your choice.
- Stir the pasta in with the slow cooker mix. Top with parmesan and parsley, and serve.
