This Vegan Creamy Mushroom Pasta Bake is an amazing dump and bake weeknight vegan dinner option. It’s made with a garlic butter cream sauce, fresh mushrooms and spinach. All you need is a casserole dish and 10 minutes to get this in the oven! Serve with vegan garlic bread for the perfect comfort food meal.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Dump and bake: This entire creamy mushroom pasta pasta dish comes together in the casserole dish. No excess dishes or complicated steps. Great for busy weeknights or when you’re short on time.
- No boiling the noodles ahead of time. So many pasta casserole recipes require you to cook the pasta al dente before baking, which is an added step I wanted to avoid here to make it a true no-boil, 1 pot vegan pasta recipe.
- Customizable. Use a combination of mushrooms or even another veggie like broccoli if necessary.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- pasta – This mushroom pasta recipe calls for uncooked pasta. You can use any shorter pastas (even orzo pasta), but spaghetti or angel hair pasta is not recommended. This recipe has also not been tested with any gluten free pasta varieties, so I cannot advise or recommend it. I will update this recipe if I try it with gluten free pasta.
- vegan sour cream – I’ve made this pasta with store-bought vegan sour cream as well as my homemade Cashew Sour Cream. I prefer the flavor of the cashew sour cream in this pasta, but both work great. If you are opting for a store-bought version, I’d recommend Kite Hill or Wayfare Foods.
- mushrooms –
- plant-based milk – Any unsweetened plant-based milk will do here, however I don’t recommend using oat milk as it’s naturally sweeter than most other unsweetened plant-based milks. You can used canned coconut milk for an extra rich and creamy mushroom pasta dish, if desired.
- white wine vinegar – This acid is helping balance out the savory creamy flavors in the pasta. A little goes a long way but is necessary in preventing the flavor from falling flat.
- vegan butter – I recommend using Miyoko’s butter for the best tasting vegan butter however any vegan butter will do.
- broth – I used vegan chicken broth in this creamy mushroom pasta recipe and used my Edward & Son’s Vegan Not-Chick’n Bouillon Cubes. Any broth will do. If you’re sensitive to sodium, opt for a low sodium vegetable broth.
Step by Step Instructions
- Prepare the sauce. Add the broth, sour cream, white wine vinegar, plant-based milk, minced garlic, and pepper to your 9×13 casserole dish. Whisk until completely smooth.
- Add in the pasta. Spread the pasta evenly in the casserole dish then submerge the pasta completely in the liquid. If the pasta is not covered in the liquid cream sauce, it will not bake through properly.
- Add the sliced cremini mushrooms overtop the creamy pasta. Leave the mushrooms on top – no mixing. This will prevent the mushrooms from overcooking and also prevent the pasta from undercooking.
- Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes. After baking, the creamy mushroom pasta sauce will have thickened considerably and be nice and creamy!
- Mix in the spinach. Add the spinach into the hot mushroom pasta and mix to combine. Recover with the aluminum foil and allow the spinach to wilt for 5-10 minutes. I often add the spinach in whole because it wilts down enough, but if preferred, you can also chop it into smaller pieces.
- Serve the creamy vegan mushroom pasta immediately while hot with vegan parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste, as desired! You can even serve it with Vegan Tofu Ricotta Cheese for a more cheesy flavored pasta dish!
FAQs
If you want to double this creamy vegan mushroom pasta, I would make two pastas in two separate casserole dishes. That will ensure the pasta cooks through and doesn’t overflow out of the casserole dish while baking (I don’t think double the amount is going to fit in one 9×13 casserole dish).
Most store-bought dried pastas are naturally vegan. Some varieties of dried pasta like lasagna sheets and egg noodles can contain eggs but most of the time they are 100% vegan and are typically made from wheat or durum semolina.
It will depend on the type of pasta you use. Rigatoni pasta is larger and 8 ounces is about 3 cups. This recipe is made with gemelli pasta and closer to 2 cups of dried pasta. Most bags of store-bought pasta are 1 lb or 16 ounces so a good rule of thumb would be to use half of the bag. If possible, I recommend measuring 8 ounces of pasta out on a baking scale for the best results.
Expert Tips
- Make sure that the pasta is almost completely submerged in the liquid prior to baking to ensure that it bakes through properly.
- If sensitive to sodium, use low sodium broth. Depending on the broth used, this creamy mushroom pasta can range from very salty to very neutral tasting.
- Enjoy right away! This mushroom pasta is most creamy and delicious when served hot right out of the oven. It still makes for good leftovers, but the cream sauce thickens considerably and isn’t quite as saucy when served as leftovers.
More Easy Vegan Pasta Recipes to Try
Vegan Creamy Mushroom Pasta
What You’ll Need
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Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cups vegan chicken broth - **see notes
- 1 cup vegan sour cream - **see notes
- 1 cups unsweetened soy milk - **see notes
- 5 large cloves garlic - minced
- 4 tablespoons vegan butter - melted (I recommend Miyoko's)
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 8 ounces gemelli pasta - **see notes
- 1 lb mushrooms - sliced
- 2 cups spinach - chopped
Instructions
- Preheat the oven at 425 degrees.
- Whisk together the broth, unsweetened soy milk, minced garlic, vegan butter, white wine vinegar, cashew sour cream, and pepper in the bottom of the 9×13 casserole dish.
- Add in the uncooked pasta and fully submerge in the liquid. Then add the sliced mushrooms overtop and lightly press down.
- Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes.
- After 40 minutes, remove from oven and stir in chopped spinach. Recover lightly for 5-10 minutes until spinach is wilted.
- Serve immediately while hot.
Notes
- Broth: You can use any broth you have. Note that if you are sensitive to sodium, I recommend a low-sodium broth. Vegan chicken broths and vegan beef broths are typically much saltier.
- Sour cream: I prefer using my homemade cashew sour cream in this pasta because it has the best flavor, but a store-bought vegan sour cream also works when you are short on time.
- Vegan milk: Again, you can use any unsweetened milk you have although I don’t recommend using oat milk because it is naturally sweet even when unsweetened. If using a store-bought milk, I recommend tasting it before adding it into your pasta because a lot of brands are now unfortunately putting a sweet flavored preservative in the unsweetened milks that defeats the purpose of them being unsweetened.
- Pasta: Any shorter pasta will work here. I don’t recommend using long spaghetti or angel hair pasta.
General note about salt
Please pay attention to the type of salt called for in the recipe (if applicable). Not all salts are made equal and cannot be substituted 1 for 1. If you are substituting table salt for kosher salt, you will need to cut the amount called for in the recipe by at least half.
Nutrition
Disclaimer: The Nutritional Information provided for this recipe is only an estimate. The accuracy of the facts listed is not and cannot be guaranteed.
This recipe was originally published June 22, 2020 and has been republished on March 17, 2022 to include a new and improved recipe, new recipe photos, step by step image instructions, and ingredient notes and substitutions.
This turned out very watery. No idea what happened
Hmmm. Was the pasta cooked through all the way? It really thickens as it cools so if the pasta was cooked all the way it may just need to cool for 10 minutes or so and thicken up.If the pasta wasn’t cooked, it may need longer time and really seal it with either a lid or tin foil. It really shouldn’t be watery. There’s only 2 1/4 cups liquid in the recipe and most should be absorbed by the pasta…sorry it didn’t work for you!
After troubleshooting with this reader over email, we figured out that this was because she had used dairy sour cream. Please only use vegan sour cream in this recipe otherwise the dairy will curdle 🙂
I am getting ready to make this recipe, and I realize there’s no quantity listed for the silken tofu in the ingredients. Can someone help me out?
Hi Stephanie! So sorry, not sure how that ingredient got deleted – it should have been one 12 ounce package. We have fixed our ingredient list.
This is awesome recipe thanks for sharing
Thank you, Simon!