Recipe Adventure: A Healthy Reimagining of Pasta Meals

Making pasta for dinner is incredibly simple. Boil water. Add pasta. Cook about 10 minutes. Drain water. Add sauce. Serve. It’s not like you need a degree from culinary school for that, right?

But while going that route may efficiently fill hungry bellies, the store-bought pasta hitting most plates is loaded with carbohydrates. If that’s all you’re eating for a meal … well, you’re missing out on some key nutrients.

But these noodle-based recipes offer a little more dietary goodness, along with flavors that will delight your taste buds.

Taste of the sea

Want to make a big splash with dinner? Pair angel hair pasta with salmon, shrimp and scallops in this protein-packed meal that puts seafood in the spotlight. A lemon-garlic sauce adds some extra zest.

A power pairing

It’s easy to eat a lot of pasta. Maybe even too much given the amount of carbs in those delicious noodles. So, here’s a trick: Serve your pasta with grilled chicken breasts to make a more complete and nutritious meal.

Get your veggies!

It’s estimated that 90% of adults in America fail to eat enough vegetables. This light-and-creamy pasta dish featuring artichoke hearts and spinach will help you meet your daily veggie goal in a mouth-watering way.

Want more options? This pasta salad with asparagus, arugula and other garden delights will have you happily boosting vegetable consumption, too. Ditto for this English pea pasta.

Asian influence

Noodles hit plates in Asia long before they became a staple of Italian dining. Honor that heritage with this colorful Szechwan dish that brings the heat with hot chili sesame oil. Try using whole-wheat spaghetti, too, for some extra nutrition.

If you’re craving a more traditional Asian noodle, try this Thai-inspired recipe made with soba or udon noodles.

Rethinking noodles

Milled wheat and water form the backbone of most pasta products. But if you’re feeling adventurous (or want to avoid gluten), try out a recipe using noodles made from other yummy sources.

Like what, you ask? Here are a few options:

• Black beans. One look at a black bean peanut noodle salad lets you know you’re eating something different. After all, the noodles are black. (How’s that for mind-blowing?)
• Chickpeas. Enjoy the nutritional benefits of chickpeas in pasta form while enjoying this classic summer salad.
• Spaghetti squash. Scrape the inside of a cooked spaghetti squash and you instantly get long, thin strands that resemble a traditional pasta noodle and can easily serve as a replacement.
• Lentils. Pasta made from lentils offers a nutritionally dense noodle. Surround it with tomatoes, arugula and pine nuts in this pasta salad and you’ve got a serious body-boosting dish.
• Shirataki noodles. The root of the konjac plant provides the main ingredients for the traditional Japanese noodle used in this recipe. (Fun fact: “Shirataki” means “white waterfall” in Japanese, a nod toward the noodle’s translucent appearance.)
• Sweet potatoes. Want a DIY noodle project? Then try out this recipe for sweet potato noodles with spinach and shitake mushrooms. Just spiralize the sweet potato, saute and serve.
• Zucchini. This garden vegetable also can be spiralized into yummy “zoodles.” Try making them to pair with skillet-cooked chicken in this Asian-themed dish or with Italian turkey sausage and sun-dried tomatoes.

Saucy goodness

If you want a traditional bowl of pasta that will generate WOWs and requests for seconds, make your own tomato sauce. It takes some time to slow-roast the tomatoes, but the taste makes it worth the effort.