There are many reasons to rejoice when sweater weather arrives. You get your foliage and apples, sure, but also: pasta season. We’ve got the fall pasta recipes you didn’t know you needed in your life, including a few blazing-new star recipes that our home cooks are obsessing about. Here they are.
1. Cacio e Pepe-Stuffed Shells With Crispy Bread Crumbs
If there’s one recipe the crowd has truly gone wild for lately (and we mean us as well as y’all), it’s these cacio e pepe-stuffed shells with crispy bread crumbs. It’s hard to pinpoint their premier selling point: Is it the shell pasta shape, which kids tend to adore? The three types of cheese with which we stuff them? The dreamboat béchamel? All we know is that we’ve taken these to potlucks and watched as all other items on the table were promptly ignored.
2. Rigatoni with Kale-Miso Pesto
Speaking of kids, did you know that if you call a kale-sauced pasta “green noodles,” you might just get them to try it? And love it? It’s true. These rigatoni with kale-miso pesto often find fans among little ones, who go gaga for its breadcrumbs, miso-spiked sauce, and cheesy vibe. Don’t have kids? No problem; you’ll be happy to hog the lot of these for yourself. Especially since the whole thing comes together in just 40 minutes.
3. One-Pot Vegetable Pasta
“No more dishes! Please no more dishes.” If you hear yourself in this rallying cry, consider one-pot veggie pasta this autumn. We love, love, love that you sauté the onion in your big pot, add more than a pound of zucchini and bright cherry tomatoes, and tuck in noodles and vegetable broth. The whole thing simmers together; the broth and tomatoes infuse the noodles; it’s just so good. (You can even store the dish in your pot in the fridge!) Amazing.
4. Pappardelle With Herb Drawer Pesto
Are there more beautiful words in the English language than, “With a food processor running?” (No, just us?) We rely on our sturdy mini prep for all things good: pizza dough; pie dough; this gorgeous herb pasta. Garlic, lemon and olive oil do their wonderfully Italian thing of making six cups of whatever greens you have come together into a sauce for pasta. That’s it! Don’t overthink it! Talk about a simple weeknight dinner. Chef’s kiss.
5. Slow-Cooker Pork Ragú with Penne
Pork fat lovers (we know you’re out there), don’t fret when you spy “boneless pork shoulder, trimmed of excess fat” in this ingredient list. Scroll up, to your beloved bacon, and breathe a sigh of relief. We all know ragú should involve some sort of pork fat base; this one is laced with onions, carrots, and garlic (classic). The bacon sautées in olive oil, which will bring everyone running, then gets a full complement of jammy tomatoes, red wine, parsley, thyme, and parsley. All the star Italian players make cameos. The result is a ragú you can pour over pasta, polenta, spiralized zucchini, an old shoe (OK, maybe not that last one) and make it all taste great.
6. Whatever-Ya-Gotta Carbonara
Think: carbonara, but… virtuous? Virtue and vice notwithstanding, this is one heck of a recipe, and it employs a whole butternut squash. (In our world, that means we’d skip the salad!) You can swap in two cups of something else, too, though: mushrooms, onions, Delicata squash, cauliflower, asparagus, or whatever you’ve got! How is this possible? Because bacon and egg do all the heavy lifting (i.e. binding) to make this a killer noodle dish no matter the minor players.
