Sausage, Balsamic Tomatoes and Onion with Orecchiette - a beautifully flavoured pasta dish with the sweetness of fresh tomatoes and delicate flavour of herbs and fennel.

Sometimes when you want a yummy pasta dish on the table, it can be all too tempting to just open and dump a jar of ready made pasta sauce into a pan and voila you are done.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (there are some pretty healthy jars of pasta sauce out there nowadays), it's really simple and quick to throw together a family friendly pasta dinner with fresh delicious ingredients.

I love making pasta dishes with fresh tomatoes, they have an amazing natural sweetness and none of the acidity that you often get with canned variety.

Yes I know it means chopping, but it really doesn't take more than a few extra minutes and you don't need to remove the skin. I just leave them on to keep it nice and simple.

Grape or cherry tomatoes are my preferred variety for this Sausage, Balsamic Tomatoes and Onion with Orecchiette recipe, but any fresh tomatoes will work.

You don't need to use the orecchiette pasta, it was what I had on hand when I made this, so don't feel the need to go out a seek some of this pasta, if you have penne or fusilli or even spaghetti, they will all work fine. The only difference really is the shape.

The sausages you use of course will vary where you live. Just choose the lowest in syn variety that you love, we are adding plenty of flavours, so you don't need to go and seek out a special kind of sausage for this.

I remove the skin from all the sausages, so you just have the sausage meat, we are chopping up the sausages in this pasta dish, so they are best with the skin removed. You could actually even make up some of the mix for these sausage patties and use that instead if you prefer.

Looking for some other recipes using sausages? Check out these:

Breakfast Quiche
Sausage, Tomato and Spinach Pasta
One Pot Sausage and Lentil Casserole
Sausage and Tomato Pasta
Breakfast Skillet
Sausages and Mash with Syn Free Gravy
Low Syn Sausage and Bean Pasta Bake
Sausage Casserole

or head on over to my Full Recipe Index with over 850 delicious Slimming World and Weight Watchers recipes all fully searchable by meal type, ingredients, syn value and smart points etc.

How can I add a ⅓ speed foods to this Sausage, Balsamic Tomatoes and Onion with Orecchiette?

There are some speed foods in the pasta dish, but I always serve this alongside a mixed salad of crisp lettuce leaves, cucumber and shredded carrots for some additional speed food.

We always serve this in the middle of the table with a huge mixed salad bowl for everyone to help themselves to. The kids eat some much better and healthier when they can pick what they want on their plates.

You can add all kinds of different things to the salad too - cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, onion, beetroot, different types of lettuce (arugula, romaine, spinach, baby leaves etc). I love a few olives too, not a speed food, but yummy all the same.

Kitchen items used for this Sausage, Balsamic Tomatoes and Onion with Orecchiette:

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