Creamy Garlic Pasta

Creamy garlic pasta is savory comfort at its best! This nut-free garlic pasta recipe is a one-pot wonder in under 20 minutes. Quick, easy, and oh so delicious!

I love creamy, garlic anything, so I whipped up a creamy garlic pasta this evening with ingredients in my pantry and refrigerator. For some reason, the beginning of the week is more stressful, so I appreciate any meal I make in one pot in under 20 minutes. So, give this creamy garlic pasta recipe a try if you want a quick and easy meal.

Jump to:

• Recipe Ingredients
• Recipe Ingredient Substitutions
• How to Make the Garlic Cream Sauce
• Making the Pasta
• Servings Recommendations
• Recipe FAQs
• Tips
• More Pasta Recipes to Try!
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Reviews

Sometimes, the simplest recipes deliver the most profound flavors. For example, people often claim that plant-based foods lack flavor, but in reality, whole foods, herbs, and spices taste phenomenal when combined correctly.

And creamy sauces don't have to be made with nuts! So, with that being said, let's make some creamy garlic pasta recipe to die for!

Recipe Ingredients

• Whole Grain Spaghetti: Whole-grain pasta is typically high in fiber, manganese, selenium, copper, and phosphorus, while refined, enriched pasta tends to be higher in iron and B vitamins. Whole-grain pasta is also lower in calories and higher in fiber and certain micronutrients than refined pasta.
• Fresh Garlic: I used fresh garlic cloves for the best overall flavor.
• Unsweetened, Unflavored Plan Milk: The plant milk provides the creaminess of the garlic pasta.
• White Wine: I like an easy-to-drink, dry white wine like chardonnay, but you can also use Sauvignon Blanc. I buy tiny bottles to use for cooking.
• Vegetable Broth: I always buy organic vegetable broth at Costco in bulk.
• Poultry Seasoning: I buy Vegan Chicken Salt, but all poultry seasoning is vegan. Dried sage and thyme make up the bulk of the flavor with their highly aromatic aroma and woodsy overtones. Most often, poultry seasoning includes nutmeg, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, and black pepper.
• Shallot: Shallots are a little sweeter than regular onions and have a more subtle flavor. They are great used in raw applications where you want an oniony flavor without too much punch and cooked; they have a savory and fresh taste.
• Parsley: Parsley's vitamin K is essential because it helps blood clot and improves bone health. Parsley is rich in vitamin C and other antioxidants, which help reduce the risk of severe health conditions like diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and cancer.
• Thyme: Thyme has a delightful flavor balance that dances between earthy and minty, minty and citrus-laced, savory but sweet, and slightly woodsy but also flowery, with traces of lavender or toned-down rosemary.
• Salt/Pepper: Salt and pepper is added to taste and enhance the flavors already in the pasta recipe.
• Oat Flour: Oatmeal and oat flour are identical in nutritional makeup and flavor because they're made from the same initial ingredient: whole oat groats.
• Nutritional Yeast: Nutritional yeast is a highly nutritious vegan food product with many potential health benefits. With it, you can easily add extra protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to meals. It's commonly used as a vegan cheese sauce flavoring.
• Baby Portobello Mushrooms: Baby Bellas are low-fat, cholesterol-free, and a rich source of essential vitamins and minerals that can enhance your health and help prevent disease. These nutrients include selenium, niacin, copper, and pantothenic acid. In season between December and March, baby Bellas have an intense, meat-like flavor when cooked.
• Baby Kale: Baby kale is small, light leaves of regular kale. Because the leaves are much smaller than regular kale leaves, baby kale is softer than larger kale varieties.

Recipe Ingredient Substitutions

• For the best poultry seasoning substitute, swap 1 Tablespoon of poultry seasoning for 2 teaspoons of sage and 1 teaspoon of either dried thyme or marjoram. You can swap in any number of dried or fresh herbs you have on hand, plus mix and match spices. An essential blend of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme will do the trick.
• Yellow onions are the best substitute for shallots since sweet onions are too sweet, and white or red is a little too sharp.
• Although cilantro is in the same family as parsley, I prefer basil with creamy garlic pasta when parsley isn't available.
• Fresh or dried, oregano makes an excellent thyme substitute. The flavors are very similar in the mint family, and it's an almost imperceptible switch.
• You replace the "regular" flour with an equal amount of oat flour by weight, not volume. This is when a kitchen scale comes in handy. Oat flour is significantly lighter than all-purpose and whole wheat flour. I suggest chickpea flour or another light gluten-free option.
• In recipes, soy sauce, liquid aminos, or Tamari are used as a substitute for nutritional yeast.
• Choose any mushroom to replace baby Bellas.
• Baby spinach is similar to baby kale in size, taste, and texture.

How to Make the Garlic Cream Sauce

As said before, not all vegan cream sauces are made from nuts. This garlic cream sauce, for instance, is made with ingredients blended together to create both flavor and thickness.

• First, saute the garlic ad shallots until the shallots are translucent.
• As soon as the mixture begins to stick to the bottom of the pan, add the white wine and stir, deglazing the pan.
• When the wine cooks down, leaving no fluid in the pan, remove the pan from the heat.
• In a blender combine the plant milk, garlic, and shallot mixture, the oat flour, nutritional yeast, and salt and pepper.
• Blend until smooth, and set aside.

Making the Pasta

• Using the same pan used to cook the shallots and garlic, saute the mushrooms until brown.
• If the mushrooms begin to stick, use a small amount of vegetable broth or water to loosen and stuck pieces.
• Now, add the vegetable broth and bring it to a boil.
• Once boiling, add the pasta and stir to combine and reduce the heat to medium, allowing the mixture to continue to boil, uncovered for 12 minutes.

• The spaghetti will cook down into the broth, and continue to stir occasionally.
• When the 12 minutes elapses, pour the garlic cream sauce into the cooked pasta and stir to combine.
• As soon as the cream mixture begins to heat up, it will thicken. Stir for a few minutes.

• Now, add the baby kale, which wilts when combined with the hot pasta ingredients.

Servings Recommendations

• I suggest adding fresh parsley and thyme for additional flavor.
• Serve with crusty bread and a side of Italian chopped salad.
• Or try a vegan Caesar salad which pairs well with this creamy garlic pasta recipe.
• Another great idea is to add vegan scallops made from hearts of palm.
• If you enjoy wine, serve with a glass of dry white wine.

Recipe FAQs

Tips

• For one-pot pasta dishes, stir the pasta into the broth covering the pasta. Iif the vegetable broth is beneath the pasta, add a little more vegetable broth than the recipe calls for to cover it. DO NOT add too much; just enough to cover the pasta.
• If you don't have flour, cornstarch will work in place of the flour.
• The white wine cooks off into the shallots and garlic, however, if you don't want to use wine, substitute lemon juice or white wine vinegar.
• To replace nutritional yeast, start with about ½ or ⅓ of what the recipe calls for and increase to taste. Consider also adjusting the liquids in the dish if nutritional yeast is a large portion of the recipe.
• Allow the cream sauce to heat for the sauce to thicken.
• If adding additional vegetables after sauteeing the mushrooms, be aware you will need enough vegetable broth to cover teh pasta once it is added. The volume of additional vegetables will impact the amount of vegetable broth added as well as the fluid content in those vegetables.

Enjoy and quick and easy dinner this week, with a savory creamy garlic pasta. Eat a delicious meal in under 20 minutes with little to no mess!

More Pasta Recipes to Try!

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