You make an easy Roasted Red Pepper Sauce, with goat cheese melted into it, and serve it with spaghetti, topped with more goat cheese and fresh basil. And a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. That’s what.
This is a super easy, simple, vegetarian recipe that only takes 25 minutes to throw together! Perfect for busy weeknights. And to save even more time, you can make the sauce in advance and keep it in your fridge or freezer until you are ready to cook! Which is good, because you’re going to want to eat this sauce with a spoon plain. It’s THAT good. This roasted red pepper sauce is for all you people who don’t like tomatoes, or can’t eat them for whatever reason. You get much of the satisfaction of a bold red pasta sauce, flavored traditionally with garlic, onions, and basil, but with roasted red peppers instead of tomatoes! And to make it extra fast and easy, I used jarred peppers rather than making my own (which is relatively easy to do, if you prefer).
When I talk about food blogging with other people, one of the questions I almost always get asked is “how do you not run out of ideas?” Honestly, I thought this might be an issue when I first started, but that has absolutely not been the case. I have more ideas than I know what to do with! And I think my best ideas come when I have something lingering around about to go bad that I need to use up, or a random ingredient in my pantry that’s taking up space, or a surplus of produce from my garden. That’s how these blueberry muffins and this oven BBQ chicken came about- two of my most popular posts! I made a couple of sandwiches a week or so ago with only a few red peppers from the jar, and it’s been in my fridge since, along with a half of a huge log of goat cheese about to go bad (because I can never resist buying large portions of cheeses at the store). Between that, the random box of chickpea spaghetti I had in my pantry, and the fact that my basil is flowering in my garden faster than I can keep up, I knew I needed to use up these ingredients. And so, this spaghetti with roasted red pepper sauce and goat cheese was born. I’m so excited to have another vegetarian, fast, easy recipe to add to my weekday rotation!
While I used chickpea spaghetti for this (which is really great by the way- it’s grain free, gluten free, high protein, and lower carb than traditional pasta), you can use any spaghetti, or pasta shape, you want. Here are some tricks I learned while I was cooking this up that may help you. First, I used a medium sized saucepan to make the sauce, rather than a skillet. This made it easier to use my immersion blender to blend it together. Unfamiliar with an immersion blender? It’s only one of my FAVORITE KITCHEN TOOLS EVER! It’s like a magic wand you stick right in the pot (or glass if you’re making a smoothie), press on, and it blends everything together. No cleaning all the parts of a standing blender or food processor! Which, by the way, you can use if you don’t have an immersion blender. Or, if you want to go really rustic, you could use a potato masher for a chunkier texture. I blended the sauce right in the pot with the immersion blender until just before it became super smooth and creamy. I wanted a little texture to the sauce. Then, I melted a bit of goat cheese directly into the sauce to make it tangy and creamy, saving the rest to top the pasta when I served it.
While I was making the sauce, I cooked the pasta. In very salty water, of course. Here’s an awesome tip when cooking pasta- don’t cook it all the way. Instead, cook the pasta until one minute BEFORE the cooking time indicated on the package. Then, transfer the pasta directly to the pan with the sauce and stir to coat. This ensures that some of the starchy water sticks to the pasta when you transfer it, rather than draining it all away. Allow the pasta to cook for the final minute directly in the sauce. It will absorb some of the flavors from the sauce, and also release some more of the starches, thickening the sauce and ensuring it sticks to every bite. And if it seems like the sauce is becoming too dry and thick, you can add a bit of the cooking water from the pasta to thin it out.
I also recommend drizzling a bit of extra-virgin olive oil on top of the pasta once it’s done, as well as serving it with more crumbled goat cheese, some fresh basil, and cracked black pepper. Olive oil tends to change in flavor when you heat it up, so I used half of it to make the sauce and saved the other half for drizzling. And the crumbled goat cheese tastes just SO yummy with the slightly sweet roasted red pepper sauce. Yum. I like to make a chiffonade of basil to garnish the spaghetti. Sounds fancy, but it isn’t. Promise. If you like this recipe, you’ll love this Five-Ingredient Pasta with Bolognese Sauce and this 30-Minute Authentic Bucatini all’Amatriciana. Here’s the recipe for Spaghetti with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce and Goat Cheese. Enjoy!
