I have a weak spot for creamy pasta. It's on the short list of my favorite comfort foods. When I started my cooking journey, one of the first things I taught myself to make was a perfect Alfredo sauce. Ever since, it's branched out from there. More recently, I've been excited about this lemon cream sauce (and the vegan almond version). But the cashew sauce in this rutabaga pasta might be my current favorite. It's easy and can be thrown together fairly quickly. Just remember to soak the cashews!
A fun and unique way to eat rutabaga, this pasta is vegan and can easily be gluten-free if you use gluten-free noodles!
Tips & Tricks: Feel free to peel your rutabagas if you prefer. Because this dish does not call for perfectly smooth rutabaga, I often skip that step.
Add extra water to the sauce as needed to get the consistency you desire. I recommend adding water a few tablespoons at a time while you puree. If you don’t have a high speed blender, you may need to soak the cashews for extra time up to 2 hours.
If you typically add salt to pasta water, reduce the salt added to the sauce.
Stock up: get the pantry ingredients you will need: cashews, pasta, vegetable broth
Nutrition: get the information.
Each part of this rutabaga pasta can be swapped with other seasonal ingredients. It's really the cashew sauce that ties everything together. Also, homemade pasta would be lovely with this recipe (especially a nice whole wheat, warm flavored pasta).
Greens: Try this recipe with collards, chard, or spinach instead of kale!
Gluten Free: Swap regular pasta for a gluten free version or your favorite gluten free grain such as millet, brown rice, or sorghum.
Root Vegetables: Don’t have rutabaga? Try this recipe with celeriac, parsnips, or turnips.
If you're new to experimenting with root vegetables, rutabaga is a great place to start. You don't have to peel it and the flavor is nice but not overwhelming or too bitter. Plus, it works well when combined with other root vegetables.
Creamy Polenta with Roasted Root Vegetables
Roasted Root Vegetable Salad
Root Vegetables with Pearl Couscous and Lemon Tahini Dressing
cashews taste so buttery that it sounds like the perfect base for a sauce! and love that the sauce coats the pasta, but doesn't look like it overwhelms it (:
Can you believe I still haven't tried rutabaga? This needs to be fixed with this pasta!
A root vegetable like Rutabaga with pasta like this is a wonderful idea! I love cashew sauce as well. Great idea all the way around!! Rutabagas are such a cold weather food. Will bring back memories of my Dad's stews:)
This sounds absolutely wonderful, like something I definitely need to make. Yum!
I'm right there with you when it comes to creamy pasta...things like cauliflower and cashew cream sauces have been my saving grace!
I made this for dinner this past week, Erin, and it was super delicious! I'd eat it every night if I had my druthers. Thanks for the recipe!
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Fantastic recipe! I used butternut squash because I had a ton of it from my CSA and it turned out beautifully. Thank you for sharing this!!
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Finally made this for dinner tonight, letting my husband know that if he didn't like it, I wouldn't do it again - but he liked it, even though he doesn't like either rutabagas or kale. I definitely enjoyed it. I did add some fried prosciutto to up the protein level. Also chose to use lacinato kale instead of the curly kind because I thought it would taste better (it did - my husband did not complain about bitter flavor). For me, this qualifies as comfort food.