25 Vegetarian Pasta Recipes That Everyone Will Love

Most people associate mushrooms with winter cooking, but for chefs, it’s the prized spring morel that really excites us. This recipe was developed around the wild morels from the Sierra used at Flour + Water in San Francisco, but feel free to substitute other varieties that are available to you.

Scribe chef Kelly Mariani says this pasta “feels like a hug on a cool day. The creamy radicchio filling is delicious with the nuttiness of brown butter and hazelnuts.” She suggests using a scale for the best results with the pasta.

Chef Josh Buckwald of Employees Only in Los Angeles created this verdant dish enriched by creamy burrata. “We love campanelle, cavatelli, or corzetti for this one,” he says, “But no wrong answers here.”

You can assemble and chill the lasagna a day ahead, but add 10 to 15 minutes to the baking time. You can also freeze the lasagna, wrapped well in plastic wrap, for up to 1 month and bake it frozen (add 1 1/4 hours to the oven time).

Pan-searing sliced tofu gives it a meatiness that’s deliciously offset by crunchy vegetables and a drizzle of black bean sauce (pour on a little less if you’re salt-sensitive). The Asian ingredients can be found in any large grocery store.

Saucing an Italian dish with the flavors of Mexican street corn is exactly the sort of madcap riff chef Donald Hawk, of Phoenix’s Valentine, specializes in. They make their pasta in-house with ‘00’ white Sonoran wheat and local egg yolk, but you can make this dish with store-bought spaghetti. And while they source their goat cotíja from Crow’s Dairy, normal cotíja works too.

We created this recipe with camping food in mind, but the one-pan strategy is perfect for weeknight meals at home. For the latter, simply use a large deep frying pan for each step of the recipe. One pan means easy clean-up, and who doesn’t love that on a weeknight?

Fresh veggies and flavorful feta cheese make this Mediterranean-inspired pasta dish big on flavor and short on prep time.

Crisp vegetables, a spicy sweet dressing, and soba noodles combine to make a perfect, picnic-ready side dish.

Stracciatella means “little rags” and in this recipe refers to the appearance of the Roman egg drop soup. Don’t confuse this “Stracciatella” with the cheese or gelato flavor by the same name; this one’s all about broth. We pair the broth with macaroni, the perfect soup noodle. Plus, eggs and asparagus love each other, so they are a natural fit.

For this intensely mushroomy lasagna, brawny portabellas and shiitakes cook down until their flavors are concentrated. Then they’re layered with a creamy, velvety sauce and sheets of no-boil pasta, which are thinner than regular dried pasta.

Brussels sprouts are the new kale! Here they’re quickly browned and still slightly crunchy. To save time, slice them with a mandoline or a food processor fitted with the slicing blade attachment.

Won ton wrappers make a great substitute for homemade pasta, so you can whip up these tasty ravioli on a weeknight. They’re made with flat-leaf parsley, also called Italian parsley, which tastes much more robust than the curly variety. Parsley is a great source of vitamins A, C, and K, so use it generously, as this recipe does.

In this recipe chefs Thomas McNaughton and Ryan Pollnow of Flour + Water in San Francisco incorporate an extra step that really has impact on the visual aspect of this dish. They practice the common restaurant technique of blanching the basil and spinach for the pesto. Briefly cooking the greens in rapidly boiling water for a few seconds and shocking in ice water sets the chlorophyll and locks in the bright green color for the finished pesto.

For maximum flavor and chewy-soft texture, the mushrooms are roasted and then simmered in broth. Save a bit of pasta water to moisten each bowl before serving.

Ginger and garlic flavor this brothy Asian noodle bowl full of tofu and bok choy. Serve Bok Choy and Tofu Noodle Bowl as a complete “one-bowl” meal.

Cooking with store-bought cubed squash saves time on weeknights. You can sub in almonds or walnuts for the pistachios.

For this summery pasta, Berkeley chef and cooking teacher Samin Nosrat cooks down half of the tomatoes into a savory jam, then adds fresh ones at the end. “I like to layer flavors, to have two levels of deliciousness.” If you can’t find ricotta salata, fresh ricotta works well, too–just drain it and stir in some salt.

These creamy noodles are a crowd pleaser—add some of your favorite veggies, too.

The cherries’ bursts of sweet juice offset the richness of the pasta.

We are big fans of frozen peas because they’re often better than fresh–and they take no time to cook. Thaw them right before you need them so they don’t get wrinkly.

Here’s our vegetarian play on the classic Bolognese pasta dish. We used precut mushrooms to make it a quick dinner, but a mixture of gourmet mushrooms would be a decadent variation. Just don’t forget parmesan cheese for the top.

Although not strictly traditional, this pesto provides an excellent complex backdrop for the additional romanesco florets. We substitute shards of crisp fried bread crumbs for finishing cheese for deep contrast of texture.

We subbed in the green fruit for olive oil to create a pesto that’s lighter and fresher than the classic. You’ll want to serve the pasta right away, while the color is bright.

Now’s the time to use spring herbs with abandon, adding them by the handful to salads, eggs, and pasta. This quick vegetarian main dish combines your choice of herbs with a little cream and some goat cheese, which melts in the heat of the pasta to lightly coat each strand. Crumble more cheese on top.