Quick & Creamy Mushroom Pasta (Blender Sauce)
Description
Low-carb pasta and spinach tossed with a creamy mushroom sauce made quickly in the blender. Canned mushrooms, coconut milk, hemp hearts, nutritional yeast, and herbs create a savory sauce using mostly pantry ingredients.
Yield: 4 servings | Sauce: 4 servings of about ½ cup (115g) each, totaling about 2 cups (460g) ✎
Prep/Cook Time: 20 minutes
Equipment required: a blender with a soup function
Storage: refrigerated for up to 5 days.
Ingredients
Other Ingredients:
Sauce Ingredients:
Instructions
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Prepare your pasta as per the package directions. When cooked, drain and return to the empty pot.
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Meanwhile, for the sauce, set aside about a third of a cup worth of mushrooms (optional). Put the remaining mushrooms and all other ingredients, apart from the vinegar, in the blender.
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Select the soup function on your blender and start.
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When the cycle has finished, add the vinegar and the mushrooms you set aside and pulse the blender a couple times to chop small. Or, you can chop these mushrooms by hand and mix them in.
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Add the spinach and mushroom sauce to the pot with the pasta. Mix to combine and wilt the spinach. If the pasta is no longer a good serving temperature, or if water has come out of the pasta and thinned the sauce, or if you prefer your spinach more thoroughly cooked, heat on low until desired outcome is reached. Mix frequently if heating.
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Divide the pasta between 4 dinner bowls, top as desired, and enjoy hot.Optional toppings: crushed black pepper, vegan parmesan, thinly sliced/shaved Brazil nut, nutritional yeast flakes, hemp hearts, and fresh or dried herbs like basil, oregano, or parsley.
Notes
- For the sauce, the weight given in the serving size was measured soon after blending. The sauce may weigh more per ½ cup once it has been stored and is less aerated.
- I've calculated the macros with Explore Cuisine edamame fettuccine. Another low-carb pasta option would be lupin or (black) soybean pasta. If you have a higher carb limit, you could use chickpea or lentil pasta. If this recipe were made with chickpea pasta, the macros would be roughly 325 calories, 20g protein, 11g fat, 30g net carbs. With a lentil pasta, the net carbs would likely be a bit higher still.
- Mushrooms usually come packed in salt water. If you're concerned about your sodium intake, you could omit the tamari or use low-sodium tamari. If you're using salt-free mushrooms, you could add additional tamari or some celery salt to reach a desired flavor.
- I find that blended hemp hearts can create a subtle earthy, almost slightly bitter, taste in some sauces, and that this flavor tends to come through a few hours after blending. I can taste it a bit in this sauce. If this taste is strong to you and you dislike it, you could replace the hemp hearts with 4-5 Brazil nuts. This swap will reduce the protein slightly, but will also infuse the sauce with a healthy dose of selenium.
- Macros for this recipes are calculated with American national nutritional data (i.e. NCCDB & USDA entries in Cronometer) for all ingredients apart from the coconut milk (Aroy-D), hemp hearts (Manitoba Harvest), and nutritional yeast flakes (blend of Bob's Redmill and Foods Alive unfortified).
- Macro numbers are rounded. Numbers equal to or greater than 10g are rounded to the nearest whole number (e.g. 10g, 11g, 12g, etc.) and numbers below 10g are rounded to the nearest 0.5g (0.5g, 1g, 1.5g ... 9g, 9.5g). Any numbers below 0.5g are given as is (e.g. 0.1g, 0.2g, etc.). Calories are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.
