Pasta

Jarred roasted red peppers, canned white beans, and a bunch of pasta water make this sauce flavorful, thick, creamy, and totally vegan.

There is a way to have your macaroni fix in the freezer: a custard-style baked mac ’n’ cheese. Instead of a cream-based sauce, this one uses eggs and béchamel to help bind a very cheesy filling with the noodles. The pimentos help to cut the richness with a little bit of acidity.

This grand gesture of thrift (at just one dollar per serving) and deliciousness has the flavors of a cozy gravy, of roasted birds on cold winter days. 

No chopping required for this weeknight dinner. Just blend spinach, kale, basil, and garlic with feta, cream cheese, and olive oil to make a fresh, rich sauce that wraps itself around pasta.

Miso gives this take on the classic Roman pecorino-and-pepper pasta an extra savory, satisfying bite. You can make your own fresh noodles at home, or use store-bought.

Making noodles by hand is a fulfilling cooking project. The results are perfectly chewy noodles, even with ragged edges and imperfect lines.

Pizza meets eggs in purgatory in this one-skillet stovetop meal which is punchy from tomatoes, creamy from starchy orzo and melty mozzarella, and ready in under an hour.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that a hot oven is involved here—this is really a stovetop mac and cheese. It only hangs out in the oven for 10 minutes, just long enough to get all the cheese properly melted.

This super-flavorful dish spins the flavors of shish barak—lamb and pine nut dumplings from the Levant—in a pasta direction.

This is a light pasta dish, filled with ribbons of fresh chard and tossed with a little garlic-infused butter and balsamic vinegar.

The truth is, there’s a time and a place for whole-wheat pasta. Its nutty, earthy flavor isn’t the best match with a light tomato sauce, but it works quite well with bolder ingredients like capers and anchovies, which can stand up to the pasta’s wholesomeness. Hearty vegetables pair well, too. Here, broccoli is cooked down and transformed into an extra-chunky, extra savory sauce. For even more texture, grated cheese is swapped for toasted bread crumbs. In Italy, they’re known as pan grattato, or “grated bread,” as peasants once used them as a cheese replacement on their pasta because they couldn’t afford the real deal. Nowadays both are easily within reach, but the crunch they add here makes it easy to leave the Parmesan behind.

Smashing some of the tomatoes as they cook helps create a chunky sauce, while others stay whole for juicy surprises in every bite.

Fresh ramen noodles become a dreamy throw-together summer meal thanks to a kaleidoscope of crunchy veggies and a tangy pantry-staple dressing.