Featuring 10 core ingredients, this creamy vegan pasta is a total umami bomb with cremini mushrooms, miso, Tamari, shallots & garlic. Ready in about 1 hour.
Elevate your next vegan dinner with this creamy vegan pasta idea. It starts with vegan mushroom duxelles–a simple stovetop method that involves cooking down finely diced mushrooms. As the mushrooms slowly cook with shallots, garlic, and thyme, their umami flavour gets more pronounced and they become tender, lush, and paté-like. Once you add some non-dairy creamer, miso, and Tamari, you get the most savoury and velvety sauce! It’s a simple but elegant vegan pasta recipe with about 10 key ingredients. I love to finish each silky bowlful with vegan parmesan and peppery chopped parsley.
This is a truly scrumptious pasta that’s perfect cozy nights. I love using Garafalo’s mafalda corta pasta shape because the little ruffles soak up the plush sauce quite well. You can easily make this easy vegan pasta gluten-free by swapping in your favourite gluten-free pasta. I’m partial to Jovial’s GF mafalda for this recipe. Most dry pasta you can buy these days is naturally vegan, made with flour and water. Of course, I always recommend double checking the label though.
The inspiration for this recipe:
- Mushroom duxelles is used as a stuffing, base of a sauce, or as a garnish in French cuisine. It is named after the marquis d’Uxelles. At its traditional core, the dish is a mixture of finely minced mushrooms and shallots sautéed in butter with herbs. The mushrooms are cooked until they have sufficiently dried out.
- Mushroom duxelles is most commonly associated with beef wellington (where it is used as a stuffing) or as an appetizer spread for crostini/toasts.
- In a recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated, I saw that Erica Turner used duxelles as the base of a pasta sauce and thought that this was just brilliant! This is my vegan take with some extra umami enhancers and other goodies added.
I chop the mushrooms up fine in the food processor, which takes about 1 minute. These get cooked down slowly until they become dark and paté-like, which takes about 20 minutes. While that’s happening, you can cook your pasta and dissolve a spoonful of salty miso in a bit of hot water. This addition brings incredible depth to the final dish! Pour in a big splash of unsweetened non-dairy creamer and stir the rich sauce all together.
Tamari brings another layer of depth to the sauce. I brighten everything up with sherry vinegar and chopped parsley. Serving this vegan pasta dish with this shaved arugula fennel salad would be a lovely pairing!
