Creamy Vegan Mushroom Pasta
This Creamy Vegan Mushroom Pasta features a sauce that is intensely creamy with a full-bodied mushroom flavor. The recipe uses cashews, almond milk, and dried mushrooms to create a very satisfying plant-based sauce.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound pasta cooked and drained, with the boiling water reserved
Cashew Cream
- 1/2 cup dried mushrooms soaked 30 minutes in 2 cups warm water then drained
- 1 cup soaking water from the dried mushrooms with the other cup set aside
- 1 cup cashews soaked for at least 1 hour
- 2 cups unflavored unsweetened plant milk
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons vinegar
- 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
Saute
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1/4 pound onion diced
- 1 pound fresh mushrooms sliced
- 1 Tablespoon sherry or vegetable stock or water
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce
Garnish
- 8 sprigs fresh parsley chopped
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme chopped
- Ground black pepper
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients for the cashew cream in a high-speed blender. Blend on low for 20 seconds, then on high for 40 seconds, until it forms a smooth creamy liquid.
- Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
- When the oil is hot, add the onion and garlic. Stir until just transparent, about 2 minutes.
- Add the mushrooms. Stir and cook until the mushrooms are just cooked through, about 5 minutes. If the mushrooms stick to the pan at any time you can add the tablespoon of sherry, vegetable stock, or water and scrape the mushrooms free.
- Stir in the soy sauce and blended cashew cream. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Bring to a simmer and taste the sauce. Add salt as needed. Stir in some the mushroom soaking water or pasta boiling water if you need to thin out the sauce.
- Add pasta into the skillet with the sauce. Use tongs or chopsticks to stir the pasta and coat it thoroughly with sauce. Simmer until the pasta is heated through.
- Garnish with parsley, thyme, and black pepper and serve immediately.
Notes
This recipe produces a generous amount of sauce for half a pound of pasta. You can use the same amount of sauce for a whole pound of pasta, though you’ll need to thin the sauce out a little bit and add extra salt, garlic, and vinegar to taste.
The dried mushroom blend that I use contains oyster, portobello, black trumpet, and porcini mushrooms. You can use any one or combination of those. Dried white/button/champignon mushrooms works nicely, as well. I use dried mushrooms here because of their potent flavor.
If you have a very high-speed blender (e.g. Vitamix) you can get by without soaking the cashews.
Almond milk is my usual plant milk.
For fresh mushrooms, I use brown/cremini. Portobello, white, porcini, oyster, and king oyster will work well here.