As you may have noticed, most of the recipes on Growing Up Garlicky are aimed toward people like me: the steak and potatoes people. We like to eat meat in this house. My husband even says “no meat, no eat,” haha! But sometimes, we do like to cut back and have a meatless dish. We do this mainly because it’s cheaper, but we also do it for health. This recipe for Lemon Butter Pasta was so good, the hubs hardly even noticed there wasn’t any meat in it.
Lemon Butter Pasta for Vegans:
Although this dish is vegetarian, you could easily make it vegan too. All you would need to do is substitute the pasta, butter, and parmesan with vegan alternatives. For some ideas, the brand Nooch It! has a vegan parmesan that gets really good reviews. Find it here. You can also use chickpea pasta from the brand Banza here.
The Veggies:
This recipe is easily adapted to whatever your tastes are! Don’t like tomatoes? Don’t use em! Want to make this in the fall? Add brussels sprouts! You can easily add or take out any veggies you want and the flavor will still be amazing. This recipe is also a very easy way to use up produce that you don’t know what to do with.
For our pasta, I used all of our favorite veggies. I added mushrooms, zucchini, onion, garlic, red bell pepper, tomatoes, and spinach. Plus with the lemon, there are so many vitamins and important nutrients packed into this recipe.
Lemon Butter Veggie Pasta
Equipment
- Pot
- Large, deep skillet
- Colander
Ingredients
- 16 oz tube-style pasta (we used casarecce, penne would also work) You can sub vegan pasta for a vegan alternative.
- 1/2 cup reserved pasta water after pasta finishes cooking.
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 8 oz baby bella mushrooms, sliced thinly
- 2 zucchini, trimmed, halved and sliced into halfmoons
- 1/2 onion, diced
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
- 1 red bell pepper, sliced julienne style
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered lengthwise
- 2 cups spinach, packed and chopped
- 4 tbsp butter You can sub vegan butter for a vegan alternative.
- 2 tbsp lemon zest
- 2 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
- 2 tbsp fresh basil
- 1/2 tsp crushed red peppers (optional)
- 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, plus more to top. You can sub vegan parmesan for a vegan alternative.
Instructions
- Boil salted water in a small pot and cook pasta according to package directions. Reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water.
- Meanwhile, heat olive oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet with deep sides.
- Add the sliced mushrooms evenly to the pan and fry without stirring for 3 minutes. Stir and let sit an additional 3 minutes without disturbing.
- Stir mushrooms and add zucchini, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and Italian seasoning. Cook until the zucchini and onion just begin to soften, approximately 3-4 minutes.
- Add bell pepper, stirring to incorporate with other ingredients and cook 3 minutes.
- Add tomato, spinach, butter, lemon zest, lemon juice, basil, crushed red peppers (if using), a pinch more of salt and pepper, parmesan, and reserved pasta water. Stir until the spinach wilts and the butter sauce emulsifies together. Remove from heat.
- Add the pasta to the sauce and veggie mixture, mixing thoroughly to ensure all pasta is coated in the sauce and the veggies are evenly distributed.
- Serve topped with additional parmesan cheese.
There it is! This is such a pretty dish with the variety of colors from the veggies and the brightness of the lemon wedges we added for garnish. It’s seriously one of my favorite vegetarian dishes. I hope you like it as much as we did!
Feel free to check out my other recipes here, take a peek at the other recipes posted below or even subscribe for email updates if you like what you see. I would love feedback on what you think so I would highly appreciate you leaving a comment if you try this recipe! Especially let me know if you try the vegan version of this recipe and have any suggestions. Thanks everyone!
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Looks delicious! I love pasta so much, and veggie is even better.
We’re usually big meat eaters, but this pasta recipe is a keeper for sure! It’s perfect for spring and summer!