Super Green Pasta
This delicious super green pasta is part of my brand new series Recession Recipes, where we make nourishing meals for under $2.50 per serving!
Even in the best of times, budget-friendly recipes are a useful trick to have up your sleeve. For decades, low income demographics struggled to combine the concepts of healthy cooking and a reasonable price tag.
With the prices soaring as they have been, I hope that my Recession Recipes series will help you eat healthy, wholesome vegan meals without bankrupting you.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- The entire recipe only contains eight ingredients, including common household items like garlic and salt. And yet, you wouldn’t believe how much flavor those few ingredients provide!
- Shopping for the ingredients, I spent $9.41 to buy enough for four servings, and then some! To be completely transparent, this amount does not include the spices I already had, but then again I only used half of the greens and a quarter of the sunflower seeds.
- Once you have an arsenal of these budget-friendly meals under your belt, you can save a significant amount of money on groceries.
- This recipe is OH-SO-EASY! It’s suitable for complete beginners, small kitchens, and busy professionals. Before you know it, you’ll be recommending it to everyone in your friend and family circle.
How to Make This Recipe
First, we will blanche our greens in preparation for the sauce. Bring a large pot of water with a pinch of salt to a boil. Add kale, spinach and garlic.
After approximately 4 minutes, use a slotted spoon or a colander to remove your veggies from hot water. Place your greens and garlic into a blender.
While the water is still boiling, add spaghetti noodles to the pot, and cook according to package directions. When the pasta is cooked, drain the remaining liquid, reserving one and a half cups of pasta water.
Meanwhile, add the remaining ingredients into a blender, including salt, lemon juice, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast and pasta water. Blend until you have a smooth, vibrant green sauce.
Combine the sauce with the cooked pasta and make sure to mix well until spaghetti is fully coated. Serve with crushed sunflower seeds, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper as desired.
Hack It!
- Depending both on where you live and where you do your shopping, this dish may cost you even less! I live in Canada, where groceries are extremely expensive at the moment, but even if you don’t feel the need to save money on food, this is a great option for a quick and delicious meal.
- If you find that the sauce is too thick, you can always add more pasta water if needed.
- As well as the toppings suggested above, you can garnish your dish with anything you already have in your fridge or pantry. You may enjoy this super green pasta with some lemon zest, nutritional yeast, crushed seeds or nuts, crispy fried onions, and more…
- If this isn’t a perfect meal prep recipe, I don’t know what is. You can either mix everything together and split your pasta into portions, or store the sauce separately and add it to freshly cooked pasta. Either way, you can enjoy this super green pasta all week!
Other Recipes You’ll Love
- Hidden Veggie Noodle Soup
- Dill Pickle Chip Soup
- Mashed Potato Pancakes
- Vegetable Soup with Rice and Beans
- DIY Lemon Cleanser
My mission is to make plant-based living easy and accessible, which includes eating a wide variety of plants on a budget. This is why I created the PlantYou Planner, a digital meal planner with a huge database of beginner-friendly vegan recipes! With over 600 recipes available in the planner, there is something for every occasion.
And if you prefer to have a tangible, physical recipe book, I have released a cookbook full of vibrant and affordable recipes. If you haven’t snatched your copy of the PlantYou Cookbook yet, hurry up to get your hands on 140+ delicious easy vegan recipes!
The Recipe: Super Green Pasta
Ingredients
- 453 g whole wheat spaghetti
- 3 garlic cloves
- 4 cups curly kale, de-stemmed
- 150g frozen spinach, thawed slightly, or 4 cups fresh
- 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- ¼ cup sunflower seeds, soaked overnight or boiled for 10 minutes
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 cup pasta water
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and add the kale, spinach and garlic. Allow to blanch until bright green, approximately 4 minutes.
- Using a slotted spoon or a colander, transfer the greens and garlic to a blender cup. Add the spaghetti to the remaining pot of boiling water, and cook according to package directions, reserving 1 1/2 cups of pasta water.
- Add the remaining ingredients including the salt, lemon juice, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast and reserved pasta water to the blender. Combine until a smooth sauce is formed.
- Pour the sauce into a pan with the cooked pasta and more pasta water as needed to thin. Coat the spaghetti, and serve, with more crushed sunflower seeds, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper as desired.
