Chorizo Pasta

This simple pasta dish is easy to make on a weeknight to feed an entire family, plus it's fairly priced. The chorizo adds an extra spicy to your typical pasta dinner, but not too much that is will drive away those with a weaker pallet.

• 1- 16 oz box of Rigatoni pasta
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 lb ground chorizo (see note)
• 1/2 lb ground lean beef
• 1- 7.9 oz jar of tomato basil pasta sauce
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded

1. Fill a large pot halfway with water and place over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and salt. Bring to a boil. Add pasta and cook per package instructions (time).
2. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, brown the chorizo and lean beef, until fully cooked. (As these are lean meats there shouldn't be any need to drain the grease.)
3. Add the jar of pasta sauce to the skillet of cooked meat. Stir in well. Lower the heat to simmer and cover.
4. When the pasta is finished cooking, drain it of water but do not rinse. Add it to the skillet, stirring in well.
5. Serve with the mozzarella cheese sprinkled on top of each serving. Make 6 servings.

Note: Ground chorizo is NOT chorizo sausage. Ground chorizo is something I've only been finding at my local supermarket for a few months so you may have look a bit for it, but it seems to be growing in popularity. It has the same taste as chorizo sausage, but it's ground meat like hamburger. I like to add it to many ground meat dishes (or most of the few that I actually make), but I only substitute up to half of the ground beef for the ground chorizo as a full substitution can be too spicy and drown out the other flavours in a dish, like the basil in the pasta sauce here.