There are a few staples that are at all of my family’s gatherings. One thing is stuffed hot cherry peppers. I just can’t do it! I don’t know, maybe I’m being too hard on my self but my cousin makes them perfect every time and mine just don’t taste the same.

Well one part of making stuffed hot cherry peppers is marinating the peppers in olive oil. Well now that I have tried to make the peppers a few times, I have a pretty good amount of olive oil that has been soaking in hot peppers for a few months. YUM!

So because I hate to waste anything, especially food, I have been finding recipes that I could use the hot oil. Pizza is a big one. Amazing! But then I thought it would be just as good in pasta with hot sausage. So yep, the hot oil at least has been good for something.

So what you have to do to make the hot oil is buy a jar of hot cherry peppers and drain the marinade that comes with them. Then you fill the jar up with olive oil, salt and pepper and I add a few hot pepper flakes because I like spice. Then you let it sit in the refrigerator. For a long time. Like a month a long time. The olive oil will coagulate, but I think it’s fine. (I mean I don’t actually know if that’s ok, but hey, I’m not dead.)

Then you eat the peppers (obvi) or just toss them if they are too spicy for your liking. I put the actual peppers on homemade pizza and that was amazing. Spicy peppers with spicy oil, a little bit of cheese and pizza dough! Perfection.

Check out the recipe below for what I did with the hot oil to make this perfect pasta.

4-6 Tablespoons of hot oil (see above for directions)
1 lb linguine
2 hot Italian sausage links
2 cups of arugula
Red pepper, black pepper and salt to taste

1. Boil pasta per directions on the box.
2. Heat saucepan to medium high temperature. While pan is heating up, remove the sausage from the casing and discard the casing. Add the sausage to the hot pan and cook thoroughly, chopping sausage into small sizes.
3. Once sausage is cooked all the way through add hot oil and red pepper flakes to taste.
4. Drain pasta and add to sauce pan, lowering the heat to medium. Mix pasta in with oil.
5. Allow flavors to cook together for 5 minutes.
6. Add arugula, mix and enjoy. 
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