Tagliatelle with Pork
Among meat dishes made with Italian pasta, the versions with a meat sauce or large pieces of meat stand out. For example, pasta with meat: big pieces of pork fried in olive oil, with fresh tomatoes and herbs, which go wonderfully with high-quality Italian pasta.
Long Italian pasta with meat is always delicious. The best option, of course, is to make pasta carbonara. Most often it is spaghetti or capellini with a sauce of fried ham (bacon, pancetta) and fresh eggs mixed with grated cheese. And in general, the vast majority of pasta dishes are quick to make. The exception, for obvious reasons, is complicated, labor-intensive pasta sauces. Bolognese sauce takes several hours to cook. Still, if you make the sauce ahead, preparing the dish comes down to mixing the boiled pasta with the sauce.
Pork with noodles, or pasta with meat, is one of the simplest, I would even say fastest, ways to make pasta with meat. While the water for the pasta comes to a boil, the pork has time to fry and the vegetables to be cut. Fried meat with noodles and fresh tomatoes is simple and quick.
What we habitually call “noodles” are pasta products made from dried dough. It should be said that noodles don’t always come from Italy. Most often, the term “noodles” is used in Eastern European cooking. Chicken noodle soup , a tasty first course, is something we often make by our own recipe. In Central Asia there are kerme soup, beshbarmak and naryn, tasty dishes with strips of dough. Japanese udon noodles are an exotic and delicious dish. Noodles, in fact, date back to the second millennium BC.
Italian noodles are not just strips of dough. As a rule, Italian noodles are made from durum wheat flour, not from the soft flour used for bread and rolls. This is important.
Tagliatelle are very thin and not very wide (up to 5 mm) strips of dough (often egg dough). Fettuccine differ from tagliatelle in width; they are literally a couple of millimeters wider. Wavy edges on the noodles tell you it’s mafaldine. Thin linguine are often made longer than usual. And pappardelle is the widest noodle pasta, from Tuscany. Though the widest pasta of all is lasagna.
Pasta with meat, or noodles with meat, can be made with almost any kind of long pasta. It’s better to use eggless tagliatelle and cook it as recommended on the package, without changing the cooking conditions or time. Including the time for the water to boil and the pasta to cook, pork with noodles takes about half an hour, which matters for a quick but filling breakfast.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Noodles (tagliatelle, fettuccine) 250 g
- Water for cooking the pasta 2–3 l
- Salt for the pasta water 7 g per 1 l of water
- Pork 150 g
- Olive oil 2 tbsp
- Tomato 1
- Hard cheese 2 tbsp
(14 g) - Parsley to taste
- Salt, black pepper to taste
Step-by-step recipe
Pasta with meat is made with dried Italian pasta. You can always buy good-quality pasta that cooks well and keeps its shape. Don’t choose very wide or very narrow noodles. Tagliatelle or fettuccine suit large pieces of fried meat best. Also avoid noodles that contain eggs, because the taste of egg is quite noticeable in the dish.
For pasta with meat you need a small piece of lean pork: shoulder, tenderloin, or leg. It’s best if there is as little pork fat as possible. A fresh ripe tomato for the pasta can be bought at any time of year, along with a little fresh parsley. By the way, fresh herbs keep perfectly in a home refrigerator.
Cut the pork into thick strips or small slices. Cut it to a size that is easy to spear with a fork and eat in one bite. Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan and let it warm up a little. Fresh natural olive oil has a characteristic smell that quickly disappears when heated. Add the pieces of meat to the hot oil.
Fry the pork, stirring constantly, until nicely browned and fully cooked. The meat loses most of its moisture while frying, so at the start there will be a lot of liquid in the pan, and once it evaporates the meat will begin to brown properly. Don’t salt or season the meat at the frying stage; pasta with meat is salted later.
Once the pork is done and has a nice golden-brown color, turn off the heat, salt the meat very lightly and add pepper to taste. Cover the pan with a lid and set aside.
Pour 2-3 l of water into a pot beforehand and bring it to a boil. Add salt to the water. The recommended amount of salt for cooking pasta is 7 g per liter of water. Add the dry noodles to the boiling water and cook for exactly the time indicated on the package. This cooking time gives pasta that is al dente.
Cut the fresh tomato in half and remove the seeds and the stem end. You can leave the skin on, as it isn’t noticeable in pasta with meat. Cut the tomato into thin, medium-sized slices. Pull all the leaves off the parsley and chop them very finely with a knife.
Drain the cooked noodles in a colander to let the water run off. Mix the pasta with the fried pieces of pork. Add the chopped herbs and the fresh tomato. Gently toss the pork with the noodles so that all the ingredients are evenly distributed.
Divide the pork and noodles among plates. Sprinkle the pasta with finely grated hard cheese. Parmesan, pecorino and Grana Padano all work well. These are high-quality aged Italian cheeses, ideal for Italian dishes. If you like, and to taste, you can also add a little freshly ground black pepper over the pork and noodles.
Tasty, quickly made pasta with meat is a good breakfast option, especially when there’s no time to cook something “monumental”. Not to mention all the fast-food masterpieces that you only have to pour boiling water over.
Calories and macros
800 kcal
Serving ≈ 410 g
- Protein31 g16% of kcal
- Fat31 g36% of kcal
- Carbs91 g47% of kcal
100 g197 kcalProtein 7.7 gFat 7.7 gCarbs 22.5 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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