I tried Ina Garten's one-pot pasta dish, and now I know why it's one of her go-to dinners

• I made Ina Garten's rigatoni with sausage and fennel.

• The delicious one-pot recipe features sweet Italian sausage, heavy cream, and Parmesan cheese.

• Garten's rigatoni pasta is perfect for cheese lovers and an easy dish for a big dinner.

I've been making my way through Ina Garten's pastas for the past five years.

Garten inspired me to improve my kitchen skills when the pandemic hit, as she shared easy recipes almost daily on her Instagram. The lockdowns eased, but I was still hooked on the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. I've now made so many of Garten's pasta dishes that I have an ultimate ranking.

One pasta I've always wanted to try is Garten's rigatoni with sausage and fennel. Trent Pheifer, a fellow Garten superfan, has made every single one of her recipes. He told me this rigatoni pasta is still his favorite.

"My go-to that I tell everyone and scream from the rooftops is her rigatoni with sausage and fennel," he said. "It's such a crowd-pleaser; it's always a hit."

Ina Garten says the rigatoni with sausage and fennel is one of her "all-time go-to dinners."

The dish appears in Garten's 2016 cookbook, "Cooking for Jeffrey," which features recipes she loves making for her husband.

Garten also demonstrated how to make the dish on a 2017 episode of "Barefoot Contessa," telling viewers: "You can make the whole thing in one big pot, bring it to the table, and everyone loves it."

I'm a huge fan of easy one-pot dinners, and I love mixing sausage with pasta. So, obviously, I had to try it.

Garten's rigatoni with sausage and fennel is packed with plenty of exciting ingredients.

To make Garten's pasta for six, you'll need:

• 1 pound of rigatoni pasta

• 1 ¼ pound of sweet Italian sausages (casings removed)

• 3 cups of chopped fennel

• 1 cup of freshly grated Italian Parmesan cheese

• 1 ½ cups of yellow onion (chopped)

• ½ cup of parsley leaves (chopped)

• 1 cup of dry white wine

• 1 cup of heavy cream

• ⅔ cup of half-and-half

• 3 tablespoons of olive oil

• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste

• 2 teaspoons of minced garlic (2 cloves)

• ½ teaspoon of whole fennel seeds (crushed)

• ½ teaspoon of red pepper flakes

Before I started cooking, I needed to do some prep.

I began by chopping my onions and garlic, then crushed my fennel seeds. Per Garten's advice, I used a mortar and pestle to get them just right.

Last but not least was chopping the fennel, where I ran into trouble. Garten's recipe states that one large fennel bulb should be enough to make three cups of chopped fennel. My fennel bulb was not nearly big enough, only giving me about half that amount.

So when you make this at home, I recommend buying at least two fennel bulbs so you don't run into the same issue — and make sure they're sizable!

It was time to start the sauce. First, I added the fennel and onions to my Dutch oven.

I drizzled some olive oil into my pot and placed it over medium heat before throwing in the veggies.

I sautéed the fennel and onions for about six minutes, stirring occasionally until they became tender.

As the onion and fennel began to cook, I prepped my sausages.

Before adding the sausages to my sauce, I had to remove their casings.

I actually learned a great tip on how to do this when I first made Gordon Ramsay's 15-minute pasta with sausage Bolognese. Ramsay recommends lightly slicing each sausage down the middle to help remove the skin, making the process easy.

Then, I added the sausages to my Dutch oven.

I crumbled the sausage with a spatula and let it cook for around seven minutes, until the meat became nicely browned.

Next, I added all my seasonings.

I threw in the garlic, crushed fennel seeds, and red pepper flakes, along with two teaspoons of salt and one teaspoon of black pepper — letting everything cook together for another minute.

Then, I poured in my white wine.

Since Garten's recipe recommends a dry white wine, I opted for a pinot grigio.

I brought my sauce to a boil, then added the heavy cream and half-and-half.

This is also when I added the tomato paste.

After bringing my sauce back to a boil, I lowered the heat to let it simmer.

Per Garten's instructions, I let my sauce simmer for 20 minutes until it had thickened.

While the sauce was simmering, I got started on my pasta.

I brought a large pot of water to a boil and added two tablespoons of salt.

After adding the pasta to the pot, I let the rigatoni noodles cook for 14 minutes.

Then, I drained my pasta and added it to the sauce.

I stirred everything together and let my rigatoni cook over low heat for five minutes, allowing the pasta to absorb the sauce.

I then removed the pasta from the heat and stirred in the parsley and half a cup of Parmesan cheese.

"A little fresh green in there always helps," Garten said while cooking this dish on "Barefoot Contessa."

Then, I gave everything one big mix. Dinner was ready!

I loved the color of Garten's rigatoni pasta. It had a pinkish tint that reminded me a bit of her delicious five-cheese penne, which I'm a huge fan of.

The bright-green parsley added a nice extra pop of color to the noodles, and everyone looked excited as I brought the big pot over to the dinner table — just like Garten had promised.

Garten's rigatoni with sausage and fennel is perfect for cheese lovers.

The Parmesan cheese adds so much richness to the pasta that my boyfriend compared it to Garten's mac and cheese (another favorite). Rigatoni is the perfect noodle for capturing all that meat and sauce, and I loved how the sweetness of the sausage balanced the saltiness of the Parmesan.

I think the pasta could be just a tad too rich for some, though if I'd had the correct amount of fennel, it probably would've helped cut through the cheesiness. I'd also recommend using a quarter cup of Parmesan first and tasting the sauce before adding more.

But, overall, this pasta has some great flavors. And if you love cheese, it will make a great one-pot dinner.

Read the original article on Business Insider