Roasted Red Pepper Pasta
Made with simple and wholesome ingredients, this Roasted Red Pepper Pasta is comforting, delicious, and makes the perfect weeknight dinner. It’s dairy free, vegan friendly, and gluten free!
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 there’s so many fun and delicious sauces to pair with it.
This roasted red pepper pasta is one of my favorite pasta recipes. It’s rich and creamy and is perfect for an easy weeknight dinner. You can sprinkle on top some cashew parmesan, fresh basil and red pepper flakes for some spice!
I love to serve it with some grilled chicken (or my lemon pepper chicken), but for a vegan version you can try my lemon pepper tofu!
It takes around 30 minutes to make and is loved by kids, adults and people in all dietary camps. If you love this recipe try my roasted carrot pasta or white bean pasta next!
Why you’ll love this recipe
- Easy to make
- Vegan friendly
- Packed with flavor
- Kid approved
- Healthy
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 roasted red pepper pasta
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.
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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! Serve with my air fryer chicken cutlets for protein!
My favorite gluten free pasta
The sauce is naturally gluten free and no adjustments need to be made here! 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.
How to store
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 and heat until warm and creamy.
Can I make it nut free?
I have not tried this recipe with something in place of the cashews. You can try using tahini in place of cashews (about 1/4 cup tahini), but you will need to decrease the amount of milk to about 1/2 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! You can also try my tahini pasta instead!
You may also like..
- Mushroom Broccoli Rigatoni
- Tomato Basil Cream Sauce
- White Wine Cream Sauce
- Vegan Vodka Sauce
- Spaghetti Pomodoro Sauce
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Roasted Red Pepper Pasta
by: claire cary
Ingredients
- 16 ounces pasta of choice
- 2 large red bell peppers
- 1 large red onion
- 4 large cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ cup raw cashews
- 3/4-1 cup plain unsweetened almond milk or other milk
- 1 tablespoon tapioca starch
- ¼ cup parmesan or nutritional yeast
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ¼ cup fresh basil
- 1 teaspoon salt or to taste
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
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. Drizzle with the oil.
- 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 3/4 cup of milk and add more as needed to thin it out.
- Stir the sauce into the cooked pasta, and top with extra fresh basil if desired!
Notes
Comments
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Loved this recipe. The pasta was so creamy and yummy.
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Thank you Ruby! It’s one of my favorites 🙂
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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!
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Thanks Alyssa! Next time you can try subbing the cashews for cashew butter, it should make it much creamier when you blend it 🙂
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This looks great! Do you think the taste would be seriously compromised if I cheated and used roasted red peppers from a jar?
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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!
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I love this. So good to have for dinner. This is so easy to heat up and this is so flavorful!
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Yes! It heats up so well, glad you liked it 🙂
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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.
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I have a vitamix! Did you soak the cashews? That should make it easier to blend! A food processor could also work
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
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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 🙂
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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!! 😁
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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:)
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Very tasty!
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Thanks Garimaa! So glad you liked it 🙂
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I only have original almond milk which has a bit of a vanilla aftertaste can you use that for this recipe?
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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!
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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 🙂
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That sounds delish! I’m so glad you’ve been liking the recipes!
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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.
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Hi Melissa! I’m so glad it was enjoyed by all types of eaters! Thanks so much for trying it 🙂
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This looks delicious. Roasted red peppers are amazingly versatile. I will be making this recipe soon.
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Thanks so much Hanne! Let me know how you like it 🙂
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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!
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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 🙂
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Such a delicious recipe- thanks for sharing!
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So happy you liked it!
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Love this!
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Thanks, Grace!
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