Black Garlic Pasta
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This Black Garlic Pasta tastes rich and decadent, without being heavy. Black garlic sauce adds a sweet and savory flavor that makes the sautéed shallots and mushrooms shine.
To enjoy this delicious pasta dinner, you’ll need to make my Black Garlic Butter first. From there, you’re just a few steps away from twirling buttery spaghetti strands into your mouth and wondering where this dish has been all your life.
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Why Make This Recipe
- This black garlic butter pasta is sophisticated enough for a special occasion, but very easy to make.
- This pasta dish highlights the unique, rich, and malty flavor of black garlic in the most delicious way.
- With the black garlic butter made in advance, this dish is on the table in 20 minutes or less!
🥗 Ingredients
- Black Garlic Butter: This is so easy to make. See the instructions in my Black Garlic Butter recipe.
- Shallots: A mild onion would make an easy substitute here. Try a Vidalia onion, a white onion, or even a red onion.
- Spaghetti/Linguine: Really any type of pasta will work in this recipe, even a gluten-free pasta. But I do love those long strands coated in butter!
- Shiitake Mushrooms: Feel free to substitute a different type of mushroom for this recipe—just note that button mushrooms or portobello mushrooms may take a little longer to release their liquid and start to brown.
- Parmesan Cheese: Substitute Pecorino Romano cheese if you like.
🥣 Step-by-Step Instructions
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat in a 10-inch nonstick skillet. Add ¾ cup of sliced shallots and 4 ounces of sliced shiitake mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper.
Sauté for 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently, until shallots and mushrooms are softened and beginning to brown.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Cook 8 ounces of pasta as directed on the package. Reserve ½ cup of pasta water before draining the cooked pasta.
Add the pasta to the pan with the shallots and mushrooms. Add 2 ounces of black garlic butter and ½ teaspoon of red pepper flakes, and toss.
Add reserved water a bit at a time, until the pasta is coated in a thin sauce (you may not need all the reserved water).
Stir in ½ ounce of parmesan cheese. Serve, garnished with additional parmesan cheese and chopped chives or parsley.
🧐 Recipe FAQs for Black Garlic Pasta
Black garlic is made by heating a head of garlic slowly over a period of several weeks to age it. At the end of the process, the cloves turn soft and black, and the flavor changes from sharp and garlicky to slightly sweet, malty, and savory.
If you want to make the black garlic butter from scratch, you’ll need to buy black garlic first. You can buy it online—here’s black garlic on Amazon. Or, you can look for it in the spice aisle of a well-stocked grocery store such as Whole Foods.
We’d put this recipe up there as one of the best ways to use black garlic, but there are so many other delicious black garlic recipes too. Use it to make this Black Garlic Aioli, which is fantastic as a vegetable dip or sandwich spread. Or, try this creamy Black Garlic Chicken for an easy weeknight meal.
Or mash black garlic cloves to add to a salad dressing. Black garlic is also fantastic in risotto. And once you have it in black garlic butter form, you can serve it on steamed vegetables, steak, chicken, or seafood—delicious on so many things! I've got lots of ideas for you in my roundup of the Best Recipes to Use Black Garlic.
👩🍳 Expert Tips
Don’t forget to reserve that pasta water before you drain the pasta. The starch in the water helps adhere the butter sauce to the pasta so you get a creamy sauce.
If you have mushroom haters in your house, you can omit the mushrooms from this pasta. The black garlic pasta sauce is plenty delicious on its own, and even better with the sautéed shallots.
To make this dish in advance, you can prepare the shallots and mushrooms, and of course the black garlic butter, and keep them in the refrigerator. But we’d recommend making the pasta and tossing it with the sauce right before you’re ready to serve.
For a slightly different version of this dish, try replacing the black garlic butter with a combination of softened butter and roasted garlic. So good! Find out the best way to roast garlic with this Roasted Garlic Recipe. Or toss the mushrooms, shallots, and pasta with this easy but delicious White Wine Sauce.
If you have leftovers and want to reheat this dish, you might find the pasta is a little dry, since it will have absorbed some of the moisture from the sauce. Add in a bit more black garlic butter and a splash of water before reheating. That should coat the pasta in the sauce again.
Other Delicious Pasta Recipes
If you love pasta as much as we do, you might want to check out some of our other favorite pasta recipes. Try this super-easy Penne Pomodoro or this Pesto Pasta with Tuna, or one of the following:
If you try this Black Garlic Pasta recipe, we would love to hear from you! Please rate this recipe and leave a comment below—your feedback is invaluable to us.
And please follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook or subscribe to our newsletter. We'd love to inspire you with more delicious, healthy, and seasonal recipes!
More Recipes to Try
📖 Recipe
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Black Garlic Pasta
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 shallots thinly sliced (about ¾ cup)
- 4 ounces shiitake mushrooms sliced
- 8 ounces spaghetti or linguine
- 2 ounces black garlic butter
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- ½ ounce parmesan cheese plus more to garnish
- Chopped parsley or chives to garnish
Instructions
- Heat olive oil over medium heat in a 10-inch nonstick skillet.
- Add sliced shallots and mushrooms, and season with salt and pepper.
- Sauté for 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently, until shallots and mushrooms are softened and beginning to brown.
- Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to boil.
- Cook pasta as directed on the package.
- Reserve ½ cup of pasta water before draining the cooked pasta.
- Add the pasta to the pan with the shallots and mushrooms.
- Add black garlic butter and red pepper flakes, and toss.
- Add reserved water a bit at a time, until the pasta is coated in a thin sauce (you may not need all the reserved water).
- Stir in parmesan cheese.
- Serve, garnished with additional parmesan cheese and chopped chives or parsley.
Notes
Nutrition
Instagram Users: Now that you've made this Black Garlic Mushroom Pasta recipe, tag me @vanillabeancuisine or #vanillabeancuisine because I'd love to see your results!
More About Molly
Cooking healthy(ish) meals with seasonal ingredients is my passion. Trained as a French pastry chef, I spent over 10 years as a personal chef. Here you'll find well-tested recipes that you and your family will love!
Was given some fresh black garlic from a co worker and hubby found this recipe. we donble-teipled the amount so the ingredients were eyeballed in terms of amount. The ONLY change implemented was adding chicken tenderloin and regular butter as hubby wanted some meat; but, this was AMAZING! The varying flavor, texture, and scent all messed so well! in our opinion, restaurant quality and we'll definitely make it again!
So glad to hear that! Thanks so much for letting me know. Great idea to add more protein with the chicken!
Wow! Just made this tonight and it was amazing. I topped it with slices of a medium rare ribeye that I cooked sous vide with more of the black garlic butter and some dried shiitake
Ooh, that sous vide ribeye sounds amazing! Thanks so much for commenting.
Fantastic way to use black garlic, with rich umami flavour!
Yes! Thank you!
I have made this several times, so I thought I should leave a review. It is such a simple yet elegant and tasty recipe. I bought black garlic on the Internet and I use it every so often to make the compound butter. I usually use about half a stick in the recipe And save half a stick in the freezer for another nights dinner. Really happy I found this one. Thanks Molly.
This article has so much amazing information. Today I learned so many things in this blog post
Keep doing your awesome work
Glad you enjoyed this post, Rahul!