Pink Pasta Sauce with Spinach and Tomatoes {vegetarian}

This easy PINK PASTA SAUCE recipe with 10 ingredients features pine nuts and spinach for extra oomph and comes together in 30 minutes. This is quick enough for a weeknight (one of those miracle quick and easy pasta recipes with few ingredients), but also delicious for a vegetarian weekend spaghetti dinner served with homemade no-knead bread and a quick green salad with blue cheese dressing.

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Ok so for today's meal I was between heavy and slightly-less-heavy, but I just COULDN'T share with you anything too light, even like the grain bowls, with these temperatures. Desperate times, man. It's just SO cold.

I LOVE vegetarian pasta recipes, maybe even more than heartier meat sauce pasta situations. Honestly meals like this feel very balanced to me with a salad on the side in an appropriate portion, plus its vegetarian, so good for the environment and other things you may or may not care about. 

Plus, it's a pink pasta sauce, so there's that.

Tomato Cream Sauce Recipe

On top of that, this meal is so dang simple and comes together in just a few minutes - 30 if you're quick at cooking, maybe a few more if you don't cook a lot or are managing some toddler's life meltdown while you cook.

We're basically making a simple marinara but adding spinach, heavy cream, and pine nuts for flavor. Pasta with spinach and tomatoes that is also creamy and pink? Yes, yes, yes.

PS, if you want to make this even faster, you can just add the spinach, cream, and pine nuts to frozen marinara or a jar of plain sauce! EASY, and so delicious. 

Ingredients and Ingredient Notes

You need! Spaghetti. Onion. Garlic. Whole tomatoes (I sprung for the expensive ones, but any store brand is fine!), spinach, cream, pine nuts, and a teensy bit of kosher salt, sugar, and crushed red pepper to your taste. Parmesan for topping unless you don't want to.

Some Variations:

• Use any type of pasta you like! I've made this with long and short pasta and it's all delicious.
• Whole tomatoes crushed by hand are lovely in this recipe, but any canned tomatoes you like work well.
• You could skip the heavy cream and make this dairy free, but this is a really lovely creamy sauce so I'd not skip the cream EVERY time.

Step By Step Instructions

1. First, start some water to boil for the pasta. Cook the pasta to al dente per the package directions, and save a cup or so of the cooking water right before you drain it. Set the pasta aside.
2. Meanwhile, make the sauce. In a large skillet, add a drizzle of oil with the onion over medium-high heat. Sauté the onion for 5 minutes or so until it's soft and translucent but not browned, then add the garlic. 
3. Stir the garlic into the onions for one minute, then add the tomatoes. Crush the tomatoes with your hand as you go, I like a few big chunks but mostly small pieces.
4. Sprinkle in the salt, sugar, and as much crushed red pepper as you'd like at this point, too. 

At this point, you'll just let the sauce simmer until the pasta is cooked and drained. Stir the sauce every few minutes, and reduce the heat to medium-low to let it simmer but not bubble too harshly.

When the pasta is done, add the spinach and cream to the sauce. Stir just for a minute to wilt the spinach very slightly (since it'll keep wilting as you add the pasta), then taste the sauce and add some more pinches of salt to your preference.

Note that adding the pasta almost always takes away from the seasoning (salt) a bit since it's fairly plain, even when cooked with salted water. At this point, the sauce should be just on the edge of too salty, then it will be perfect once you add the pasta.

Add the spaghetti, and taste one.more.time for seasoning. If the spaghetti wasn't very salty from cooking water, add a bit more salt. Splash in a few tablespoons of the reserved pasta water at a time to create a sauce thin enough to coat all of the pasta. 

Toss everything together with tongs, then serve! Topped with pine nuts, parmesan, and extra red pepper flakes, omg this is just so good. 

I didn't use baby spinach here, and the heavier leaves hold up well, almost like kale, when this is all tossed together. The sweet cream and garlicky sauce are SO good with the buttery pine nuts. 

This: after-work, so cold and tired, healthy-but-cozy-but-creamy. Get it, get it.

Recipe

Pink Pasta Sauce with Spinach and Tomatoes {vegetarian}

This easy tomato cream sauce recipe features pine nuts and spinach for extra oomph and comes together super quickly. Spaghetti night is now every night!

5 from 54 ratings

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 25 minutes mins

Total Time 35 minutes mins

Course Dinner

Cuisine Italian

Equipment

• Chef Knife
• Shallow Bowls
• Dutch Oven

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 12 ounces spaghetti
• ½ onion diced
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 28 ounces canned whole tomatoes in their juices
• salt and crushed red pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ¼ cup heavy cream
• 4 cups spinach leaves
• ¼ cup toasted pine nuts
• parmesan cheese for topping

Instructions

 

• Cook the spaghetti to package directions to al dente in salted water. Right before draining, reserve about a cup of the cooking water for the sauce. Drain.
• While the pasta cooks, make the sauce. Bring a large skillet to medium-high heat with a drizzle of olive oil and the onion. Stir the onion for about 4 minutes (while the pan is heating up) until translucent and soft but not brown. Add the garlic and stir for one minute.
• Add the tomatoes, crushing them with your hands or a spoon as you add them to the skillet. Sprinkle the tomatoes with the sugar and as much salt and crushed red pepper as you'd like. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let the sauce simmer for about 10 minutes while the pasta cooks.
• When the pasta is drained, add a few tablespoons of the pasta water to the skillet. Stir, and add the cream and spinach. Wilt the spinach just for a minute, then taste the sauce and add more salt to your preference.
• Add the spaghetti to the skillet (use the pot you used to cook the pasta if the sauce skillet isn't large enough). Toss to combine, and taste one more time for seasoning; add more crushed red pepper or salt to your preference.
• When the pasta is heated through, serve topped with the pine nuts and parmesan cheese. Magic, easy no-knead bread to sop up the sauce probably wouldn't hurt anything. Enjoy!

Notes

Pasta: Most pasta comes in 16 ounce packages. This recipe will work with 12-16 ounces of pasta, depending on whether you like a lot or a little pasta. I often cook the whole box and add in a little at a time when tossing with the sauce, then store any leftovers plain for a quick butter + parm pasta lunch.

Prep: This can be made in advance and reheated in the microwave for lunches. Alternatively, you can make the sauce in advance and boil the pasta freshly when you're ready to eat.

Tomatoes: I like crushed whole tomatoes in this recipe, but crushed tomatoes or even canned chunky tomato sauce work well for this sauce.

Tried this recipe?Let me know how it was!

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