Gordon Ramsay’s sausage ragu tagliatelle takes about 15 minutes to cook, with just a few minutes of prep. First introduced on his cooking show Ultimate Cookery Course, the dish became a regular family dinner after serving as a comforting meal during the early days of the pandemic. Sausage gives the straightforward tomato sauce a fuller, more distinctive flavour.
Five core ingredients, with pasta alternatives
The main ingredients are dried tagliatelle, sausage, tomatoes, half an onion and a few cloves of garlic. Ramsay recommends fennel or Sicilian-style sausages. If tagliatelle is not available, pappardelle works as a substitute.
The recipe can also be adjusted to suit what is on hand. On one occasion, the author used cherry tomatoes, finding their juice a good addition to the sauce. Chopped Italian parsley is another optional addition: it is not part of Ramsay’s original recipe, but brings freshness and colour.
Five minutes of prep before cooking
Before turning on the stove, chop the onion, garlic and parsley, then halve or dice the tomatoes. Remove the sausage casings by making a lengthwise cut along each sausage, then break up or chop the meat. Preparation generally takes no more than five minutes.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add the pasta, while starting the sauce in a separate pan. Cook the onion for a few minutes, then add the garlic and parsley and continue until the onion and garlic soften. Add the sausage, breaking up the meat with a spatula as it cooks, and season with salt and black pepper.
Tomatoes and pasta water bring the sauce together
Once the sausage has browned, add the tomatoes. Ramsay’s recipe calls for chopped tomatoes, but the author and her father found the sauce a little dry when they first made it, so they added a can of chopped tomatoes. The extra tomatoes made the sauce more generous without noticeably changing its flavour, and helped it coat the wide pasta.
While the sauce simmers, check that the pasta is al dente, with a little firmness left. The author tests a strand by lifting it out and briefly rinsing it under cold water before tasting. Just before the pasta is ready, add two spoonfuls of cooking water to the sauce and take the pan off the heat. Ramsay says the starch in the water helps thicken the sauce and makes it cling to the pasta.
Toss with parsley and Parmesan
Drain the pasta, add it to the sauce and toss well. Finish with parsley and grated Parmesan. The dish has stayed on the family’s regular menu for years: the author’s father likes the depth the sausage brings to the ragu, while her mother says it tastes like “coming home.”
Its appeal lies in a short ingredient list and a quick cooking process, with flexibility to adjust the tomatoes or use a different pasta. For the family, adding a can of chopped tomatoes makes the sauce more plentiful while keeping the basic flavour of Ramsay’s recipe intact—a practical dinner they can return to week after week.