This Quick & Easy Pantry Pasta is Your New BFF
There is a particular sort of low-key panic that sets in when everyone’s tummies are rumbling and the clock is ticking ever-closer to bedtime and you realize that you actually don’t have an answer the question that you just know you’re about to hear. As you mentally scan your pantry, someone speaks those three big little words—“what’s for dinner?”
If you’ve got five ingredients, you can make this unbelievably luscious creamy roasted red pepper pasta sauce. In fact, it’s worth just leaving these five ingredients on your grocery list at all times, because this is such a handy meal to be able to make when getting dinner on the table seems like a pipe dream. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Pasta! Pick a pasta with ridges if you can—we especially love rigatoni—to give the roasted red pepper cream sauce something to cling to.
- A jar of roasted red peppers. This one is self-explanatory, right?
- Stock. You can use vegetable stock to make this roasted red pepper pasta vegetarian, or use chicken stock if you prefer—either will add lots of flavor. You could also use water in a pinch.
- Heavy cream! No substitutes, please! With just five ingredients, there’s no room for subs.
- Fresh basil. If you don’t have fresh basil on-hand, you can still make a good red pepper cream sauce, but the fresh basil really does add a lot of fresh, bright flavor to this simple pantry pasta.
How To Make Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Smoky, sweet and slightly tangy, jarred roasted red peppers are a flavor-giving powerhouse. Here, we use this pantry favorite to make a simple homemade rigatoni pasta sauce taste restaurant-worthy. This roasted red pepper sauce is so fast—about ten minutes start-to-finish—and easy to make, it feels like cheating. If you can open a jar and open a carton, you can make this creamy roasted red pepper pasta sauce. Here’s what you do:
- Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
- Add your pasta and boil until it is al dente. We usually begin to taste for doneness after six minutes.
- While the pasta cooks, combine heavy cream, stock, the jar of drained roasted red peppers, basil, salt and red pepper flakes in a blender and blend until smooth.
- Drain the pasta.
- Pour the red pepper cream sauce into the now-empty pasta pot, and bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat.
- Add the drained rigatoni and parmesan cheese to taste.
- Stir and serve!
Make It Perfect:
It’s hard to mess this recipe up—hard, but not impossible. There are a few things to know before you get started:
- Drain your jarred, roasted red peppers! Roasted red peppers are a super-versatile pantry staple. These meaty, sweet roasted bell peppers are usually seeded and then packed in water that has been seasoned with salt, sugar and often citric acid (a preservative). In this case, you definitely want to drain that liquid before using the peppers so that your creamy pepper sauce isn’t too watery.
- Salt your pasta water. This is such a simple dish, with flavor coming from just a few ingredients, so there’s no need for short cuts or skipped steps.
- Once you combine the creamy roasted red pepper sauce with the pasta and parmesan, stir for a few minutes over low heat to allow the flavors to really mingle. You want every last nook and cranny of that rigatoni (or penne, or farfalle) to be coated with your sweet, smoky, tangy cream sauce.
Tools You’ll Need:
Pasta To The Rescue!
This pantry superstar saves the day, everytime. Here are three of our very favorite easy weeknight pasta recipes:
Couldn’t Be Easier, Right?
We really love to see how our recipes work for you guys, and we think this one is especially genius—do you? Snap a photo of your finished bowl or pot of our roasted red pepper pasta, and maybe even a video of the beautiful people you feed it to. Tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper. Happy eating!
