Penne with Italian Sausage and Peppers

There are several specialty diet cookbooks out right now, including ones for if you have my favorite appliance, the Instant Pot!

For those following the Paleo diet, and those that forget to dethaw their protein, there is “No-Thaw Paleo Cooking In Your Instant Pot” by Dr. Karen S. Lee.

The author of “Keto Cooking with Your Instant Pot” and “Paleo Cooking with Your Air Fryer,” Lee also has her own website, drkarenlee.com and a blog dedicated to holistic health with recipes.

In this book, she includes 75 recipes that use ingredients from the freezer that follow the Paleo diet.

There are five chapters of recipes in the book: Carnivore’s Cave, Fins and Shells, Slurping Noodles, Steaming Soups and Stews and Leaves and Roots.

Carnivore’s Cave has recipes for Nona’s Meatball Marinara over Zoodles, Easy Chicken Garam Masala and Ropa Vieja with Cauli Rice.

Fins and Shells include seafood dishes like Asian-Style Salmon with Ginger and Scallions, Instant Shrimp Scampi with Capers and Sweet Potato Lobster Roll.

Slurping Noodles has dishes such as One-Pot Penne with Mussels in Marinara Sauce, Sweet Potato Noodles with Beef and Baked Gluten-Free Ziti with Meat Sauce.

Steaming Soups and Stews offer recipes for Chicken Potpie Soup, Dairy-Free Zuppa Toscana and Vegetable Mulligatawny Soup.

Leaves and Roots end things with Beets and Pink Grapefruit Salad with Citrus Dressing and Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie.

One night, I decided to try out Penne with Italian Sausage and Peppers. I will add a caveat — I did not use brown rice penne, I used regular penne and I did not use frozen sausage because I hate beyond measure cooking with frozen protein. HATE. So.

The recipe, even if you are using frozen sausage, comes together quickly all in one pot, which is always the benefit of the Instant Pot. The sausage is browned, then peppers are added and then the sausage, peppers and pasta cook all together in the Instant Pot for 5 minutes (plus the time it always takes to come up to pressure.) I’ve cooked pasta in the Instant Pot several times now, and have had success with it.

The dish tasted good and everyone ate all of it, so it was successful for the family as well.

“No-Thaw Paleo Cooking” is published by Page Street Publishing. It is $21.99.

Contact Amy Phelps at aphelps@newsandsentinel.com.