Before I declare this orzo pasta to be the best recipe in my repertoire, I need to provide some necessary context: once upon a time, whenever I signed up for a meal train, I immediately panicked.

Look, I pride myself on several things, the top one being I am self-aware. On a good day, I am a mediocre cook. On a regular day, I am one step away from burning frozen pizza. On a bad day, everyone eats cereal and I call it done. Are you getting what I'm putting down? Me + kitchen = yikes.1

So, those meal trains would go something like this: a friend had a baby (or needed surgery, or some other life event that required love and support), meal train was activated, I signed up for a slot, and then four hours before said meal needed to be delivered, I panic-printed a recipe off Pinterest, attempted to make it, usually screwed up some portion of the instructions, and then dropped off a container while praying it didn’t taste like garbage.

For a long time I operated under the guise that the only way to deliver a meal to someone in need was to show up with an impressive recipe from the Internet that required a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Thankfully, I know better now.2

Which brings me to The Orzo Pasta. The first time I made this recipe, I liked it. The second time, I went off script and added meat. The third time, I cut the dairy altogether with a few substitutes. The fourth time, I declared it perfect. The fifth time, I cooked it for another family who came over for dinner (and promptly asked for seconds).

I have now made this recipe, no joke, probably close to 25 times. In the spirit of Kendra Adachi’s “decide once” principle3, this pasta is officially my go-to meal anytime I sign up for meal trains and when we host people for dinner. Forget the panic-printing of Pinterest recipes; I know this recipe by heart! ME! A recipe! By heart!

This pasta is light, but filling, and completely dairy-free (which in my experience is great for new moms because a lot of breastfeeding mothers cut dairy from their diets at some point). I’ve never tried freezing it, but we always have leftovers that keep well in the fridge for 2-3 days.

One Hit Wonder Orzo Pasta

Adapted from Erin Clarke’s One Pot Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Orzo with Spinach, as featured in The Well Plated Cookbook (which is my all-time favorite cookbook!)

Ingredients:

• 1 (16-ounce) package orzo pasta

• 1 (3-ounce) package dry-packed sun-dried tomatoes

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzle

• 1 small yellow onion, diced

• 1 tablespoon minced garlic (I use the kind that comes in a jar because I’m lazy but fresh garlic is great, too)

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

• 4 cups low sodium chicken broth

• 5 ounces baby spinach, chopped (about 5 cups)

• Zest and juice of 1 lemon

• 16 oz mild Italian sausage (either packaged ground, or in casings you can remove)

• Optional: 3/4 cup dairy-free shredded parmesan cheese (I like the Follow Your Heart brand best)

Directions:

1. Place the sun-dried tomatoes in a small bowl and cover with very hot water. Let sit to rehydrate while you prepare the orzo.

2. In a large pot with a fitted lid, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté for about 3 minutes, until it starts to look soft. Add the orzo, garlic, salt and pepper. Stir and combine.

3. Slowly stir in the chicken broth and bring to a gentle boil. Use a wooden spoon to occasionally scrape the bottom of the pot to prevent the orzo from sticking. Once pasta is boiling, cover the pot and reduce heat to a light simmer. Cook until the pasta is al dente and most of the liquid is absorbed, 7-10 minutes. Lift the lid every couple of minutes to stir and run the spoon along the bottom to prevent sticking.

4. While the orzo cooks, put a drizzle of oil in a separate pan on medium-high heat. Then add sausage to the pan and use a wooden spoon to break up the sausage into small pieces. Cook until the sausage is cooked through and becomes brown and crumbly in texture, about 7-10 minutes. Note: the orzo and sausage take roughly the same amount of time to cook. I’m usually standing at the stove monitoring both pans during that time. When sausage is cooked, remove from heat and set aside.

5. Once the orzo is done cooking and liquid is mostly absorbed, turn the heat to low and stir in the spinach and sun-dried tomatoes. Note: the sun-dried tomatoes I buy from Whole Foods are pretty big, so I typically chop them into bite-sized pieces after they rehydrate. Depending on the brand/where you buy them, they might already come bite-sized in the package.

6. Zest the lemon directly over the pot, then cut the lemon into four slices and squeeze the juice on top of the pasta. Mix again until the spinach is nice and soft, then add the sausage. Top with dairy-free parmesan, if you’d like, and stir one final time. Taste and season with additional salt and pepper if needed. Voila!

Tip: Whenever I drop this off as a meal, I always grab a loaf of fresh bread to go with it, and put the pasta in a container I don’t need back. I recently brought this to a new mom from my yoga studio and she gave me the sweetest thank you card, pledging to use the same container to “pay it forward” the next time she brought someone a meal—I loved that!

Last month I visited my best friend Katie, who not only devoured a bowl and promptly got a second helping, but also told me this recipe was the perfect fuel for her next-morning Peloton ride. She said, and I quote, “the next two days were the best I had felt on the Peloton in months! Like I had the perfect amount of energy!!”

All of that is to say: this recipe has superpowers, apparently.

This concludes likely the first and last time I will ever share a recipe on Substack. If you, like me, are an elder millennial and prefer to print your recipes at home, here’s a very unfancy Google doc. Happy cooking!

Do you have a one hit wonder recipe like this? Please spill or link it in the comments for the rest of us!

Leave a comment

p.s. In case you missed it, here’s a longform piece about food (among other things).