The sauce alone packs a punch with its tangy and savory sweetness, carrying the simmered warmth of molasses, brown sugar, vinegar, and tomato-based condiments. It's a seamless blend into the pasta's own hearty base, further highlighting all of the dish's existing goodness. Then you've got the beans, adding bulk along with nutty and earthy notes as they cling onto the al dente pasta.
This speedy vegan take on cacio e pepe utilizes a classic technique: Cook the pasta just short of al dente, reserve some of the starchy pasta water to add body to the sauce, then simmer the pasta in its sauce with a splash of pasta water, stirring vigorously until the sauce is emulsified. I'm going to show you how to make my vegan cacio e pepe. It's not a classic cacio e pepe. It doesn't have cheese.
Pasta with sauce is, and always will be, one of my most beloved comfort meals. It's also one of the simplest, speediest, and most satisfying combos in my cooking repertoire, serving as a reliable staple at the end of my busiest days. Because I've been trying to reduce the amount of ultra-processed foods in my diet, I've experimented with homemade sauces that are relatively low-effort yet made with entirely whole ingredients.
Canned butternut squash purée makes this cozy cold-weather dish come together in a snap. Hearty like risotto and deeply autumnal in both flavor and hue, it's the kind of weeknight dinner you'll come back to all season long. Just try not to eat all the brown-butter-fried sage before the pasta is ready.
Even something as simple as aglio e olio, a classic Neapolitan dish made with olive oil and garlic, can have a completely different impact on your taste buds in a restaurant. You might not realize it on a conscious level, but the main thing chefs do better than home cooks is nailing the texture. In restaurants, pasta isn't cooked to al dente perfection in the pot; instead, it's slightly undercooked, then finished in a skillet together with the sauce.
There are dishes that take a lot of time, effort, and expertise to pull off (like the peak crispiness of Peking duck, perfectly airy brioche donuts, or a really excellent croissant, where the luscious layers are so beautiful, you just want to sink into them and melt away with the butter). These are places where shortcuts either don't work at all or, if they technically do, they don't yield anywhere near the same result.
Obviously, in a dish with as few ingredients as aglio e olio, that bitter, burnt garlic is going to stand out front and center, and throw everything off. But even when it is hidden by other ingredients, such as in a tomato-based sauce, bitter garlic is a flavor best avoided. The root of good cooking is getting the best out of every ingredient, after all.
The best weeknight meals are ones that come together with minimal prep and a fairly short cooking time. Some can be largely prepared ahead or in batches - say in a slow cooker - and simply reheated. Choosing recipes that don't have you running all around town for an unusual ingredient also helps, as does picking one-pan dishes that guarantee easy cleanup.
To me, pasta is the most versatile of food types and lends itself perfectly to such seasonal cooking: a walk through damp woodland, say, often makes me crave wild mushrooms, sauteed with garlic and herbs, then tossed with fettuccine, while, as the days shorten and the air cools, a slow-cooked game ragu with penne always hits the spot, as does a warming blast of 'nduja in a creamy sauce.
In the classic vodka version, the ethanol in the alcohol is used as an emulsifier in the sauce but doesn't really add any flavor. Since more flavor is more better, I decided to try swapping out my favorite adult beverage, and the result was a smoky take on the Italian American classic.
According to Karen Frazier, a Tasting Table recipe developer and mixologist, there are lots of ways to incorporate bourbon into pasta dishes - from replacing the vodka in a vodka sauce to making a buttery bourbon and sage sauce or a mushroom bourbon pan sauce. Bourbon can also replace the wine that's used in a number of pasta dishes, including Bolognese - in the case of Bolognese, you can use bourbon instead of wine in a 1:1 ratio to deglaze the pan.
In 1827, in the small Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, Italy, Giulia Buitoni-a mother and home cook-became so well known for her starchy noodles that she decided to launch a pasta business. She didn't have much money, so she traded her most valuable necklace for a pasta machine. The trade was well worth it. Buitoni pasta was an instant success in Italy, and within the century, the company was selling its pasta around the world.
This chicken zucchini skillet bake is a hearty summer dinner that will easily serve a large family. Orecchiette pasta and chunks of chicken breasts are tossed with onion, celery, garlic, tomatoes, and red bell pepper. It's topped with pieces of zucchini that are tossed in grated Parmesan cheese. Combined, there are layers and layers of flavors in this dish. Then, after it's
