Made with simple and wholesome ingredients, this Vegan Roasted Red Pepper Pasta is comforting, delicious, and makes the perfect weeknight dinner. It’s dairy free, vegan and incredibly easy to make!
Pasta, I love you. Pesto pasta, mac and cheese, and this roasted red pepper pasta, you name it, I love it. It’s my go to comfort food and was always my favorite food to bring on long road trips as a kid.
This roasted red pepper pasta is one of my favorite pasta recipes. It’s rich and creamy without a touch of dairy and is perfect for an easy weeknight dinner. Sprinkle on top some cashew parmesan, fresh basil and red pepper flakes for some spice!
It takes around 30 minutes to make and is loved by kids, adults and people in all dietary camps.
The key to a creamy sauce
If you’ve recently cut dairy out of your diet, I understand the struggle of not knowing what to use in cooking to make things creamy. Fortunately, there lots of amazing replacements these days to satisfy your creamy pasta cravings. There are a few key ingredients we will be using that will yield a super creamy red pepper sauce.
Cashews: Raw and soaked cashews are my go to ingredient to make any pasta sauce cream. I do have a slight intolerance to cashews, but I deal with pain after eating this pasta because it’s just so good.
Olive oil: A good quality olive oil is going to give this sauce depth of flavor and will help round out the creamy texture. You can omit this if you are oil-free, but it won’t be quite the same.
Almond milk: You can use any non-dairy milk in place of almond milk if needed. Just make sure it is both unflavored and unsweetened, we don’t want any hits of vanilla in this pasta!
How to make this recipe
First, add the cashews to a bowl of boiling hot water and soak them while you prep everything else. Next, you’ll want to chop the onion, peppers and peel the garlic.
Add them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. While those are roasting, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook pasta according to package instructions. When it’s done, don’t rinse it, but drizzle with a bit if olive oil and toss around.
When the veggies are done, add them to a blender with the drained cashews and all remaining ingredients.
Process until smooth. Combine with the cooked pasta, top with fresh basil and enjoy!
Does it keep?
Yes! Once prepared, this vegan roasted red pepper pasta will store in the fridge for about 3-5 days. To reheat, add the pasta to a pan with a splash of almond milk, oil or water to bring out the creaminess and reheat over low heat until warm.
You can also just pop it into a microwave safe bowl, add a drizzle of oil, then microwave for about 1 minute or until nice and hot.
Tips & tricks
You don’t want to skimp on the onion or the garlic in this recipe. I recommend using 4 large, like really large, cloves of garlic or 6 smaller ones.
To keep this dish gluten free I used brown rice pasta, but any pasta will do! For extra protein you can use chickpea pasta or a legume based pasta.
I have not tried this recipe with something in place of the cashews. You can try using tahini in place of cashews (about ¼ cup tahini), but you will need to decrease the amount of milk to about ½ cup. I have not tried this myself, but I think it would work well! The flavor will be a bit different and more nutty, but still delicious!
Always salt your pasta water! Generously! It will infuse a ton of flavor into the pasta while it cooks AND it even helps the sauce “stick” to the pasta better. Especially important if you’re using gluten free pasta!
You may also like..
- Mushroom Broccoli Rigatoni
- Tomato Basil Cream Sauce
- White Wine Cream Sauce
- Vegan Vodka Sauce with Penne
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Roasted Red Pepper Pasta
Ingredients
- 16 ounces pasta of choice
- 2 large red bell peppers
- 1 large red onion
- 4 large cloves garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- ½ cup raw cashews
- ¾-1 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
- 1 tbsp arrowroot powder (tapioca or cornstarch also work)
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tsp salt (or to taste)
- ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
- ¼ cup fresh basil
- Black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add the cashews to a bowl and cover with boiling water. Set aside while you prep the remaining ingredients. If you have had trouble with cashew based sauces in the past, you can boil them in a pot for about 20 minutes while you prep all other ingredients which helps to soften them further.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Peel the garlic, and chop the onion and bell peppers into large chunks.
- Place on a silicone baking mat or parchment paper and roast for 30 minutes.
- While the veggies are roasting, cook your pasta of choice.
- When the veggies are done, add to a high speed blender with the drained cashews and all remaining ingredients and process until completely smooth. Start with ¾ cup of milk and add more as needed to thin it out.
- Stir the sauce into the cooked pasta, and top with fresh basil if desired!
Ruby
Loved this recipe. The pasta was so creamy and yummy.
Claire Cary
Thank you Ruby! It’s one of my favorites 🙂
Alyssa
This recipe was easy to make and was delicious. It was very creamy! The only trouble I had was that I only have a Nutribullet, so it didn’t blend as smoothly as I would have liked, but it was still good!
Claire Cary
Thanks Alyssa! Next time you can try subbing the cashews for cashew butter, it should make it much creamier when you blend it 🙂
Naomi
This looks great! Do you think the taste would be seriously compromised if I cheated and used roasted red peppers from a jar?
Claire Cary
It’s not going to have quite the same flavor, but it might work! You definitely don’t want to leave out the roasted onion or garlic though, so may as well just throw the fresh peppers in there too!
Olivia
I love this. So good to have for dinner. This is so easy to heat up and this is so flavorful!
Claire Cary
Yes! It heats up so well, glad you liked it 🙂
Elle
What kind of blender did you use to get the sauce so smooth? I have a Ninja and it came out super lumpy, no matter how long I blended it.
Claire Cary
I have a vitamix! Did you soak the cashews? That should make it easier to blend! A food processor could also work
Elle
I did. Boiled water, then poured it into the bowl so it covered the cashews and let it sit while I chopped and roasted the veggies. I even tried using an immersion blender after the regular blender. The cashews were raw.
Claire Cary
An immersion blender is unfortunately not powerful enough for cashews, but you can try subbing the whole cashews for 2-4 tbsp cashew butter next time! You should get about the same result 🙂 Sorry for the trouble, a high speed blender is necessary for this recipe.
Amanda
I boiled my cashews the whole time the peppers roasted instead of setting them in a bowl of boiled water and it worked in my Nutribullet. I’ve avoided cashew sauces in the past because they turned out gritty for me but this method solved that problem. The sauce was creamy and delicious-even my extremely picky three year old gobbled it up. Hope you try it again and have better results!
Claire Cary
Such a good idea! I’ll make note of that for other readers who make the recipe. Thanks for the feedback and so glad you enjoyed it!
Kris
Delicious and easy! I completely forgot to do the last step and poured the sauce straight from the blender over my pasta and it was still very tasty. I added some salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes before blending — I like heat in almost all of my food. Sautéed up some asparagus and mushrooms to mix in, and used plant-based higher protein penne.
This was so perfectly easy – will it freeze well? I’d love to double a batch next time I make it.
Claire Cary
YUM! I love asparagus mixed in with this! I do think it would freeze well, however, certain gluten free pastas/legume based pastas don’t hold up very well so I’m not sure how well that would work. The sauce on it’s own would definitely be ok to freeze though! Let me know how it turns out if you try it 🙂
Joan
Loooooove this recipe. It’s one of my go to’s that I just keep making. I add spinach, asparagus and cannellini beans to it usually. So easy to make! Thanks so much!! 😁
Claire Cary
Thanks Joan! So happy it’s such a favorite! If you don’t mind leaving a star rating along with your review next time, it really helps us out:)
Garimaa
Very tasty!
Claire Cary
Thanks Garimaa! So glad you liked it 🙂
Jamet
I only have original almond milk which has a bit of a vanilla aftertaste can you use that for this recipe?
Claire Cary
I highly recommend using plain, unsweetened milk for this recipe. I’d check the ingredients on yours to make sure there is no added sugar. Otherwise, it may not turn out very well!
Elizabeth
Just made this tonight. It was quick and super tasty. I added some spinach for some greens. This is the second recipe I’ve tried from your blog / instagram and they have both been so flavorful. So much that my teenage daughter not only eats it but says she will eat again. Thank you for posting them 🙂
Claire Cary
That sounds delish! I’m so glad you’ve been liking the recipes!
Melissa
I made this tonight, served with choice of Seitan “sausage” or regular Italian sausage for the carnivores in the house. Made a great one-dish meal.
Claire Cary
Hi Melissa! I’m so glad it was enjoyed by all types of eaters! Thanks so much for trying it 🙂
Hanne
This looks delicious. Roasted red peppers are amazingly versatile. I will be making this recipe soon.
Claire Cary
Thanks so much Hanne! Let me know how you like it 🙂
Kelli
I’m new to cooking Vegan, and my very first recipe called for adding nutritional yeast at the end. I thought it totally ruined the flavor of the meal. Does the yest do anything except fool people into thinking it’s ‘creamier’? Do you think this recipe would be okay with out? I’m so sorry, but I really didn’t like it! Thanks for any advice!
Claire Cary
You can totally just leave it out if you don’t like it! It does give a slightly “cheesy” flavor, but I’ve made this recipe without the nutritional yeast many times, and it’s still delicious! Let me know what you think if you try it 🙂
Leslie
Such a delicious recipe- thanks for sharing!
Claire Cary
So happy you liked it!
Grace Cary
Love this!
Claire Cary
Thanks, Grace!