Today on the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast we are making Creamy Mushroom Pasta for dinner. It is a penne pasta with cremini mushrooms all coated in a delicious garlic parmesan sauce.
Transcript
Click for the full transcript.
Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your Audio Library of amazing Dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich
Hey Hey everybody. Okay. I’m so excited to be in my office today. It has been a minute, so this last week, if you’re listening to this in real time last week, I actually spent five wonderful glorious days in Chicago with other people in my industry. So content creators, photographers, recipe developers, podcasters, and a lot of those people. When you’re doing the job that I do, you’re just meeting those people online or through social media and to actually meet some of these people in person is just, it’s so inspirational and so wonderful.
So I’m feeling on top of the world today and it’s also good to be home and to be eating in my own house. I’m gonna tell you what, when you’re traveling for five days, the constant eating out gets to be too much. I love a good, rich, yummy dinner, but when you’re eating steak and fries and you know really rich breakfasts every day it gets to be a little bit much and when you’re having all the drink, It can be a little bit much after five days.
So I’m back home. Happy to be here. Super happy to be recording another podcast episode and I bet you’re wondering what we’re making for dinner tonight. So tonight we are making the creamy mushroom pasta. So when I’m in the kitchen cooking, one of my absolute favorite smells in the kitchen, this is kind of weird, but one of my favorite smells is when butter is simmering in a pan and you add fresh garlic and mushrooms. That three ingredient combo, they need to make a candle that is mushroom, garlic, and butter . I would burn it in my kitchen every day. So that’s going to be the foundation of this recipe for creamy mushroom pasta.
I was looking at this recipe because we’re gonna make it for dinner and the recipe calls for eight ounces of pasta and you know, then it has the cream sauce and the mushrooms and I have on there that it serves four people, and I’m like, in what world does eight ounces of pasta feed four people.
So I think I need to go back and make this recipe. Obviously I’m gonna make it tonight, but I need to maybe, adjust how many people this serves. So I think with eight ounces of pasta, I think you could serve that to four people, but you for sure better have a side salad and maybe some garlic bread to go with it.
So my recommendation for right now is that if you make this pasta dish for four people, Double the recipe, and then if you have leftovers, great. You’ll have delicious pasta for lunch the next day. This recipe is going to come together pretty quickly, so probably in the time that it takes for you to cook the pasta, which is probably gonna be, you know, eight to 10 minutes, you can also have the cream sauce with the mushrooms already in another pan. So I would say in total, at like 20 minutes tops to get this done.
Recipe Tips and Tricks
For our tips and trick section, the only thing that I really wanna talk about here are two of the ingredients included in this recipe. One is a 10 to 16 ounce container of Cremini mushrooms. In the grocery store they are going to be the ones that are about the size of button mushrooms, like the white button mushrooms, but they’re gonna be really dark brown in color.
It should say cremini mushrooms on the package, or it might say baby bella mushrooms, because a cremini is basically the same thing as a portobello mushroom, just much smaller and more in the middle of its ripeness. But it still has super delicious, you know, really earthy, hearty mushroom flavor. Of course, any mushroom type will work here, but the cremini or baby bella mushroom is what is written in the recipe.
The other ingredient that I wanna talk about is the Parmesan cheese. So this is going to add quite a bit of flavor to the actual sauce for your pasta. So my recommendation is that you get a really good Parmesan cheese. So if you go to your grocery store and they have, you know, the really processed commercial Parmesan cheese, it’ll look like a little triangle that’ll work, absolutely.
But if you want that really kind of tangy, rich aged Parmesan flavor, look for something that comes off of a full wheel of Parmesan. It’ll look really craggy, kind of dry and rustic that is going to have way more flavor than your, you know, really processed Parmesan. So that’s it for ingredients and tips and tricks.
Creamy Mushroom Pasta Audio Recipe
Let’s go ahead and just jump right into the full recipe for the creamy mushroom pasta. So, like I said before, you’re gonna need eight ounces of pasta. Just cook that per package instructions to like an al dente. The tip here though, is that you always, always wanna cook your pasta in a salted water. Your water, it’s gonna take way more salt than you think.
So add that kosher salt. You can actually taste the pasta water, and if it tastes like salty sea water, then you’ve salted it enough. So go ahead and cook your eight ounces of pasta. If you’re doubling the recipe, go ahead and use a whole pound. You can use penne pasta, any kind of like tubular noodle, like a rigatoni, a cavatapi, anything like that will work really well.
So while that is cooking, you’re gonna go ahead and get the mushrooms sauteing and make that cream sauce. So in a large skillet, something with taller sides melt three tablespoons of butter over medium to medium low heat. Then you’re gonna stir in those 10 to 16 ounces of sliced cremini mushrooms. And three, at least three, plump garlic cloves that have been chopped.
If you like more garlic, add more garlic. Then get that sauteing around the pan for about 10 minutes and inhale that smell. The smell of butter and garlic and mushrooms is like heaven.
Now at this point you’re gonna add one more tablespoon of butter to the pan. we do this because we’re gonna make a roux to make the sauce thick, and when you cook mushrooms and butter, they generally will absorb all the butter, which is great.
Makes it super delicious. But you need a little more fat in the pan to thicken your sauce. So add one more tablespoon of butter. Then you’re gonna stir in an entire teaspoon of salt and two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. You’re gonna stir that around the pan. It’s going to coat the mushrooms, and it’s going to start to kind of thicken up a little bit.
Then you’re going to pour in one cup of heavy cream and a half a cup of milk. That milk can just be 1% milk, whole milk, skim milk. It just slightly lightens up that heavy cream. Stir that really well so that there’s no lumps left in your sauce and simmer it lightly until it starts to thicken up. And this will just take a couple minutes.
Now you’re going to remove it from the heat, you’ll add in your cooked pasta, and then you’re going to add in a half cup of shredded Parmesan cheese. You stir it until the pasta is completely coated with that melted creamy cheese sauce. So good. My mouth is watering right now.
Serving
And then give it a taste. We always recommend that you taste before you serve. Make sure that you don’t want to add a little more salt or if you want to add some fresh garlic at the end or if you want some parsley in there.
The other nice thing about this recipe is you can absolutely add some extra mix ins, so if you want, you can add some fresh spinach in there and just wilt it down to add a green note. You could add some sauté or grilled shrimp or chicken. You could also add some asparagus in there when you add the mushrooms. Or this is another great idea at the very end, you can stir in a couple tablespoons of pesto, fresh pesto. Super, super delicious. It add adds a really bright note.
Now, when you taste it, if you feel like the dish is a little heavy, you can also squeeze on a little bit of lemon juice, and that always adds a little bright note. I always say if you taste a recipe and you feel like there’s just something missing to the recipe, it’s usually an acid. And what you add for that is, you know, vinegar, balsamic vinegar, citrus. Any of those things will work to add that high note.
Side Dishes
Like I said before, when you’re serving this, I definitely recommend adding a side salad.
This is such an easy recipe that, you know, just a really good bagged Caesar salad from the grocery store will work perfect. You wanna put a little more effort in? You could absolutely make my big old Italian salad (podcast episode for Italian Salad) with fresh pesto vinegarette, but that’s a little more work. If you’re making this during the week, on a Thursday, you might wanna just like grab a bag of.
If you have a Trader Joe’s nearby, they have an excellent salad that would be perfect with this, that I’m actually serving tonight. It is an arugula salad that has a lemon vinaigrette and it has like almonds or maybe it’s pistachios in it. Look for it at, um, Trader Joe’s. Super delicious. And then of course, warm bread, like a ciabatta bread or breadsticks or garlic bread would be perfect here as.
Tips for Cream Sauces
Now since we’re making a cream sauce, I’m gonna talk through just a couple points here about troubleshooting cream sauce. And this is gonna be, you know, whether you’re making an Alfredo, if you’re making this creamy mushroom pasta. Sometimes cream sauce can give you problems.
So if you’re making cream sauce and you’re feeling like it’s not thick enough, you can simmer it for longer, but you always wanna make sure that you’re stirring cream sauce because that cream that fat can burn to the bottom of the.
If you are simmering your cream sauce and it didn’t thicken up at all, and you’re like, this is still like milk . What you can do is mix a heaping tablespoon of corn starch with about one and a half tablespoons of cool water. Stir that together, and what that is called is a slurry. And then while your sauce or your liquid is simmering, you pour that in, whisk it, and it should thicken up right.
Now if you don’t want to use a corn starch, there’s another option called a beurre manie, and that is a French word, fanciness, for kneaded butter. And what you do is you take a tablespoon of softened butter, a tablespoon of all-purpose flour, take a fork and mash it together completely. And then while your sauce is simmering, whisk it in and that will thicken it perfectly.
Now if you’re done with your cream sauce and you’re like, this is light glue, it is too thick. What you want to do is just whisk in a little more milk. Maybe you want to whisk in some more cream, chicken broth, water, whatever you wanna use, just whisk in a little bit more liquid.
All right. That does it for our full recipe for creamy mushroom pasta today.
I hope you make it for dinner on this Thursday night. If you’re listening real time, it’s Thursday! You can always look for a new recipe to come out on Let’s Make Dinner podcast every Thursday morning, and then hopefully you’ll grab the ingredients and make it for dinner that night.
Of course, all of the recipes I talked about in this episode will be linked right in the show notes, so you can click through and go to the recipe hit jump to recipe. Jump right down to the recipe card. Cook from my website. If you’re on your phone, there’s a little button in the middle of my recipe card called Cook Mode, and it’s a little toggle switch. Toggle it on and then your screen will not go dark, like best invention ever. So when you’re cooking, you don’t have to continually turn on your screen.
It will just stay on for you the whole time and you can cook. You could also print out the recipe. You can pin it, you can actually, if you’ve got to go to the grocery store and you’re on your phone, you can text yourself all of the ingredients and a link back to the recipe right from my recipe card. So check it out I hope you’ll use that feature. It is so slick.
All right, we’ll see you guys next week, and as always, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner Makes your Dinner Time a little easier.
Double Dip- Next Weeks Episode
And now it’s time for the double dip. . I love the double dip. Double dip is so casual. Here we are.
What a double dip is, is where you are enjoying making these recipes and cooking along with me on Thursdays when you’re fresh out of dinner ideas. You can come here, make the recipe, and then listen to the double dip and figure out what we’re making next week.
So next week on the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast, we are going to make crispy fish sticks. So if you’ve ever had fish sticks from the grocery store, then you know that a lot of times it’s actually minced and pressed fish. It’s like a chicken McNugget . It’s just pressed. So if you want something a little bit better, something a little bit fancier, but doesn’t take a ton of time, then you can actually buy a really nice filet of fish into, you know, sticks.
Bread it with some Panko, get it really crispy in the oven and serve that up. You can make your own tartar sauce. You can bite it at the grocery store, whatever you wanna do. , but that’s what we’re making next week. So I want you to be prepared and have the ingredients that you need to make your crispy fish sticks.
So let me go over all of the ingredients that you need to grab to have on hand for next week’s episode. All right? There’s not a lot. Most of it’s going to come from your spice cabinet. You need:
- 1.5 pounds of codfish, filets
- all-purpose flour
- three eggs
- Dijon mustard
- Kosher salt
- Cayenne pepper
- panko breadcrumbs
- onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, or smoked paprika.
- non-stick spray
- Foil
I hope that you’ll join us next week and make the crispy fish sticks with us, and I’ll see you then.
Have a great week you guys.
Subscribe To Stay Connected!
Sign up for the Mom’s Dinner Newsletter, delivered every Sunday morning, straight to your email inbox. It includes all the new recipes, videos, dinner ideas for the week and fun kitchen tips and tricks.
Comments
No Comments