Pantry Pesto Pasta
The wintertime typically means there’s a little extra emphasis put on the pantry, especially if you’re trying to eat seasonally! But that doesn’t mean you have to settle for dull or bland! Canned, bottled, or frozen foods are fantastic additions to the dry goods and root vegetables you may be enjoying, and can really bring some pantry staples to life. This weekday pasta harnesses the rich umami of pesto, the spice of red chili flakes, the brightness of some lemon juice, and a little added protein from frozen peas! It’s easy, comes together quick, and feeds a crowd, check out the recipe below!
Ingredients
Serves 4
1 16oz box of pasta: We prefer small Rigatoni or Orchiette, but anything works, even Gnocchi!
4-5 cloves of garlic: peeled and thinly sliced
1 ½ cups of pesto: we used pesto ala Genovese, but any will do! Opt for vegan pesto to make the entire recipe vegan!
1 cup of frozen peas
1 lemon: juiced. Or, use 3-4 tbsp of juice.
1 tbsp of red chili flakes
2 tsp black pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste
Preparation:
Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Once boiling, add your pasta and stir every 3-4 minutes to prevent clumping.
While your pasta is cooking, put a large sautee pan on medium heat and add your olive oil. Once the olive oil is warm and shimmering, add in your peas.
Once your peas have fully defrosted and have begun to cook down, add in your garlic and chili flakes and stir well.
After 3-4 minutes of cooking, add your pesto to the peas and garlic and stir well. Bring the pan heat to low.
Once your pasta is al dente (still a little firm, not fully cooked), use a large spoon to pluck your pasta directly from the pot to the pan. You want to bring some of the pasta water with each spoon full (this will help thicken and emulsify the sauce!).
Stir to combine, and cook on low heat until you’ve reached a sauce consistency you like! Add your lemon juice and black pepper and stir to combine again.
Plate and enjoy!
Best Practices:
As always:
This recipe relies heavily on packaged goods. That said, not all packaging is made equal! Make sure to opt for food packaged in recyclable containers! The plastic that frozen peas come in is very likely not recyclable, but if you’re really into cutting down your plastic you could freeze your own peas over the summer in reusable containers. But don’t forget, sustainable eating is not about perfection! And reducing the carbon impacts of eating meat by replacing it with plant based protein (the peas in this case), is still an improvement on the impact of this meal compared to others.
Try to bring your own reusable bags when you go shopping for these ingredients, and choose local, in-season produce when you can.
These ingredients have been chosen with several things in mind:
We are posting this recipe in winter because nearly all of these ingredients are available year-round or commonly in a shelf-stable form. That said, as always, we encourage you to shop as locally and seasonally as possible, and if that means you need to improvise with some ingredients or choose to add something you have fresh on hand, we’re all for it! It’s likely that the lemons will not be available locally, in which case you can swap them out for canned lemon juice or another acidic ingredient like vinegar!
As we mentioned before, lots of these ingredients are available in shelf-stable forms and are thus available year-round and take a long time to go bad. This includes the pesto, as well as the spices!
This recipe can be made GF with the use of a GF pasta, and can be made vegan with the use of a vegan pesto!
Did you enjoy this recipe? Let us know! If you really loved it, share it on social media and tag us (@groundedgrub), or, better yet, share it with your friends and family!