More Pasta & Noodle Recipes

This classic Italian dish benefits from 6 ounces of delicious pancetta.

Grace Parisi's pasta Bolognese features a traditional combination of ground beef, pork, veal and tomato enriched by smoky pancetta. Slideshow:  Fast Weekday Pastas 

Spot prawns are incredibly sweet, with plump, tender tails reminscent of lobster. Be sure to remove the prawns from the pan before finishing the sauce to keep them from overcooking.

My mid-December birthday marks the start of Dungeness crab season in the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps I’m biased, but in my opinion, Dungeness is the tastiest crab there is, and worth celebrating in and of itself. Several years ago, I started inviting friends over under the guise of a birthday party, but really, it’s a celebration of the season, the past year, and, yes, the fresh catch of the best crab on the planet.My guest list includes too many friends to fit around my dining table, so we’re packed like sardines, snug in the candlelit room with magnums of Champagne and piles of steaming whole crabs to be cracked and dipped in melted butter. It’s messy and a bit chaotic, but fancy at the same time. I’d have it no other way.I like to choose a theme for the annual menu, usually inspired by a travel experience I had that year. Last year I visited one of my favorite cities, New Orleans, not once but twice, so it seemed fitting to laissez les bons temps rouler come December. The crab was cooked with Creole seasonings in the boil, classic and delicious, but the surprise hit was this macaroni au gratin served with it.To make it, I channeled iconic restaurants like Galatoire’s, Clancy’s, and Brigtsen’s—some of my favorites to visit when I’m in the Big Easy. A glorious amount of crabmeat baked with shell-shaped pasta in a three-cheese cream sauce —tangy white Cheddar, nutty Gruyère, and sharp Parmigiano-Reggiano—is no-joke delicious, and trés riche. That’s where the Champagne comes in. The tingly bubbles give your palate an ultrasonic scrub between each creamy, cheesy, blissful bite. Blanc de blancs, or Chardonnay-based Champagnes, are particularly good here. They can be saline like shellfish, complex like great cheeses, and bring enough acidity to play counterpoint to both.This recipe is not cheap, but it is easy. Once you shred the cheese, the rest is simple assembly. I buy the crabmeat picked, because, as I’m told by my fishmonger, it averages out to be about the same price as cooking whole crabs and picking the meat yourself, and it saves precious time. If you don’t have access to Dungeness, try this with your local variety, or whatever type of crab you can get your hands on.

Hungarian cuisine has a particularly “noodle-forward” concept of comfort food. When traveling in Budapest several years back, I noticed (and leaned eagerly into) a recurring theme of noodles, dumplings, and other forms of homey starches on restaurant menus and in home kitchens alike. There were rustic, spaetzle-like noodles called nokedli, many varieties of stuffed dumplings, baked noodle puddings, and diós tészta, a sweet dish that coats broad noodles with a copious showering of ground walnuts and sugar.Above all was káposztás tészta, or cabbage noodles. This more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts dish sautés a pile of sliced onions and an equal amount of shredded cabbage until silky, deeply browned, and caramelized. The whole delightful mess is then folded into softened dumplings or egg noodles, still warm from the pot. The effect is truly dazzling.Variations of cabbage noodles are served across Central and Eastern Europe from Poland to the Czech Republic. Depending on where it’s being made, the dish might be dressed up with a sprinkling of paprika or ground poppy seeds, studded with salty nibs of bacon, or folded with other sautéed vegetables or cottage cheese. I like to brighten it up with a hit of lemon zest and heaps of fresh dill, parsley, and chives. It’s just enough sunshiny flavor to elevate the dish while sacrificing none of its deeply cozy and comforting soul.

A soothing hot pot is the perfect excuse to set out ingredients and casually dine at the table. Although this recipe can be executed at the stove, donabe hot pot is traditionally prepared on a portable burner at the table. Cook the tofu and vegetables first, then soak up the delicious broth with chewy ramen noodles as a second course.

Tagliolini! Spaghetti! Gnocchi! We know we’re not supposed to pick favorite foods, but if we did, pasta would definitely be up there. In this roundup, we’re celebrating noodles in all their glory, from a delicious smoked gouda riff on carbonara to ravioli with no-cook fresh tomato sauce. With dozens to choose from, you’re bound to find a new favorite.

One of my all-time favorite foods to cook for cold, dreary nights is braised meat—slow-simmered until it is meltingly tender and has perfumed the whole house with savory aromas. I usually reserve that kind of cooking for the weekend since it takes hours, but thanks to the Instant Pot, I can eat this way even on a busy weeknight. And that’s a great thing because we all deserve to eat this way whenever we want to (or, in my case, need to).The meat of choice in this recipe is chuck roast. It’s reliably rich and reasonably fatty, a perfect contender for braising. When cut into large chunks, seared, and cooked under pressure, it takes only 30 minutes to reach perfect fork-tender doneness—not hours as it would in the oven or on the stovetop. Once it’s done, I pull it into large shreds and toss the meat and sauce with pasta. Pappardelle is my noodle of choice because the broad noodles soak up the sauce beautifully, but you could also use tagliatelle or fettuccine. The meaty sauce is equally good over a bed of mashed potatoes or polenta if you’re not in a pasta mood—but you might want to thicken it a bit if serving that way.It’s worth noting that a few special touches give the sauce added oomph with barely any added effort. First, along with onion and garlic, some sliced fennel bulb goes into the pot, where, through the magic of pressure cooking, it goes from super crunchy to buttery soft and yielding with a light whiff of anise. And a canned chipotle chile goes in as well, where it disintegrates while adding a hint of smoke and heat.So when nothing but a big plate of meaty pasta will do—and your heart demands tender braised meat, not ground meat (which is also delicious but a totally different experience)—pull out the pressure cooker. In just about an hour, you can be diving into this big bowl of soul-satisfying goodness.

For a simple and ultra-creamy baked pasta, take a cue from chef Ashley Christensen of Poole’s Diner: Trade the béchamel for this much easier sauce of heavy cream simmered with plenty of nutmeg and two kinds of cheese.

To create the classic ridges on each piece of gnocchi, use a paddle or fork to gently indent each side. Those grooves help the rich, buttery sauce cling to each tender bite.

This basic recipe for fresh egg noodles is studded with bright green parsley. Serve the noodles simply buttered, or with this Squash-and-Tomato Sugo.

Resting this enriched pasta dough for the full 2 hours is essential to the final texture. Too short of a rest results in puffy, thick noodles, while a well-rested dough rolls into thin, tender pasta.

Editor’s Note: This recipe has been modified from the version developed by Andrew Brochu to include cannabutter instead of regular butter. You’ll find the original non-cannabis recipe here.At Chicago’s Roister restaurant, chef Andrew Brochu puts a delicious spin on classic pasta with clam sauce, adding a spicy green chile ragout, fresh herbs, crème fraîche and lime juice. Slideshow: More Seafood Pasta Recipes

I don’t mean to turn this into a confessional, but this dish came together because I saw a jar of marinara sauce sitting on the kitchen counter. Hey, inspiration comes in all shapes, sizes, and forms. But this is a traditional baked ziti with creamy ricotta and mozzarella, salty parm, and tender pasta, all just so yummy together, plus the carrots and zucchini. On occasion when I’m really busy, I’ll go to the grocery store and get vegetables already chopped, and throw everything into the slow cooker for a nice dinner later on. It’s a shortcut on top of a shortcut. I’m gentle when folding in the spinach, as the pasta could start to fall apart if you do this with hurried, crushing blows. Tom and I both like this with a fresh Caesar salad, but any crisp, cold, and simple green salad will go well with this dish.Excerpted from Valerie’s Home Cooking by Valerie Bertinelli. Copyright © 2017 Oxmoor House. Reprinted with permission from Time Inc. Books, a division of Time Inc. New York, NY. All rights reserved. Slideshow: More Baked Pasta Recipes 

A classic browned butter and sage sauce gets a boost of fall flavor from pumpkin butter. Be generous with the Parmigiano-Reggiano, its salty, savory bite adds the perfect hit of umami flavor to this decadent pasta dish.

Swap out your favorite cream-based pasta dish with something lighter for a healthy weeknight dinner. Zucchini noodles, whole wheat pasta, grilled veggies and fresh seafood are some great ways to make any pasta dish a little bit healthier. These healthy recipes include soba noodles with grilled shrimp and cilantro and summer squash "linguine" tossed with shrimp.

This classic creamy macaroni salad has just the right amount of crunchy vegetables. Slideshow:  More Pasta Recipes 

The neck of the butternut squash is easy to peel and cube, making it perfect for dishes easy pasta dishes. This recipe is a great way to use up that pesky bottom half, as here the halved squash is simply baked until soft, and then the flesh is scooped out. Slideshow: More Macaroni and Cheese Recipes 

If you don’t feel like making homemade pasta dough for the tortellini, use 112 square wonton wrappers instead, cutting them into 2-inch squares if necessary. Then simply follow the instructions for filling and shaping the tortellini. When boiling the filled tortellini, decrease boiling time to 4 to 5 minutes.

This is the quintessential LaFrieda family comfort food. When butcher Pat LaFrieda was growing up, the meat in the sauce varied based on what his dad brought home from the butcher shop—one weekend, it might be spicy Italian sausage, the next, it might be spareribs. The slow-cooked beef short ribs Pat uses in the version from his book, Meat, give the dish a lovely richness. Slideshow:  Meaty Pastas 

Food & Wine’s Justin Chapple cooks chorizo in oil, then uses that oil to cook shrimp and garlic, infusing this entire dish with excellent smoky flavor. Slideshow: More Pasta Recipes 

These hearty recipes include angel hair pasta with squid, mussels, and zucchini and seafood capellini with saffron.