Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta With Sage and Walnuts Recipe (2024)

YUM! A keeper.To ease cleanup, roast squash (1.5 lb bag of frozen, tossed with oil/salt/pepper) on a foil lined baking sheet. Add garlic halfway through 25 min bake.Cook pasta, drain, set aside (reserve 1 cup pasta water).Using the pasta pot, add oil, crisp sage, remove, and then crisp walnuts. Mix with zest in small bowl. Leave excess oil in pan,add tsp of red pepper, stock, cooked squash/garlic. Puree in pot with stick blender. Dump pasta back in pot with reserved water & Parmesan cheese.

This is my VERY FIRST NYT cooking comment but I feel so strongly about this recipe that it felt right!! I noticed many people in the comments complaining about a lack of flavor in this recipe. My partner and I tripled the garlic (we love garlic, but still) and added mushrooms (leftover baby bellas and shiitake) cooked in butter and we LOVED this pasta. Super flavorful. We didn't even have enough sage - we added leftover thyme - and still thought it was great! Don't sleep on the garlic!!

I found this delicious. I could see adding some pancetta if your a meat lover, I’d bet the saltiness would cut the sweetness of the squash nicely. I like the texture of the crispy sage, but it does have a pretty bitter finish, so if that’s not your thing, maybe don’t feature it as prominently (could be chopped up to let it blend in a bit more.) Just ideas, though, I loved it as is, but I do love butternut squash as a pasta sauce in general!

I like this dish a lot. I prepared as written but for a 50/50 pecan/walnut mix due to poor pantry stocking.Lots of opportunity to riff on this simple foundation. Others have suggested substituting rosemary for the sage (sure!) or regularly partnering ginger with butternut (also, why not? but when? minced and included with the roasting or raw with the garlic during the puree?). I came away thinking a rough chopped white onion with the roasting would help.

I used 1.5 lbs. of precut squash and 3/4 lb. of pasta. I added 1 T of lemon juice to squash and stock, then pureed them. I cooked 2 ozs. of cubed pancetta in the sauce pan first, removed it and added 1 T olive oil to the rendered fat. I then fried the sage leaves (1/2 the amount in the recipe) and walnuts. I stirred the squash puree into the skillet and then stirred in the walnuts and pancetta, putting sage leaves on top.Served it with a simple bitter arugula and tomato salad. Perfection!

Added onions to the squash and garlic to roast. Then chopped and crisped bacon, then used the bacon fat to brown the walnuts, then fried sage. Tossed them all in. So good!

Much easier way to deal with the squash: Cut the unpeeled squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds. Place cut side down on a baking sheet. Rub the skins with a little oil. Place some unpeeled garlic cloves in the seed cavities. Bake at 400 F for 40- 60 min or until the squash is soft to the touch and the cut surfaces are nicely caramelized. When cool enough to handle scoop out the soft flesh. That’s it. No peeling or blending required. The garlic will be soft and ready to go as well.

Great recipe! Family loved it. I made it with penne pasta and it tasted great, so don't worry about subbing out the pasta type. I used the method of just cutting the squash in half and scooping out the seeds, however I didn't skin it and had a hard time getting the skin off after cooking it. So I'd definitely recommend peeling it first. Also I burned the garlic to my pan, so I'd recommend putting the garlic in at 8-10 minutes left of cooking. Enjoy!

I was super disappointed with this!! I’m a big butternut squash lover and was excited to make a creamy vegetarian/dairy free pasta, but this totally fell flat. It’s essentially butternut squash soup over pasta. The walnut, sage and lemon zest topping was yummy but the sauce was a big disappointment. We tried adding almond milk, butter and other ingredients to help it be more of a sauce and less of a “soup” but nothing helped. Do not recommend

Let’s try again. My first comment was rejected because I called this baby food pasta (also RoboCop food). But it is! It’s bland and mushy like Gerber’s, and too one-note/sweet for the non-baby palette. I know they add lemon zest and the fried salty crunchy bits for flavor/texture contrast, but those get lost and the dish does not work. It might work as a base (with way more salt and cream) for a baked dish with lots of bubbly cheese on top and the bits sprinkled as a garnish for that, but idk.

If you stab a butternut squash a few times and then microwave it a few minutes, peeling and chopping it is MUCH easier.

Pretty uninspiring; looked nothing like the pic!! Bland and unexciting, and LOADS of washing up. Wouldn't do again.

Not a big fan of butternut squash sweetness, so added all the Notes suggestions (thank you!): entire head of garlic, bacon, mushrooms, double walnuts, added lemon juice, topped with fresh herb/scallion mix and blended all into pasta/squash. But most critical thing I would do is reserve half the blended squash, mix squash with pasta and add reserved portion as needed--way to much squash for a pound of penne. But definitely delicious, not too sweet and will repeat!

Delicious combination simple flavors that come together nicely. I did roast sweet Italian sausage and onions which I sliced up and added on top. To make this meal a little quicker I roasted and pureed the squash the night before.

My family loves this recipe. To cut corners, I use 1 tetrapac of butternut squash soup and reduce it with 2 cloves garlic, 1/2c Parmesan and salt and pepper. Mix with pasta and top with the fried sage, walnuts and lemon zest. Yum and quick!

Made with whole wheat pasta but otherwise as written. Delicious! Picky kids loved it too!

I know they are expensive, but pine nuts to replace walnuts made this dish spectacular

It's good, but it does require som modification. First, a LOT more salt. The comments saying it's on the bland side are not wrong. Second, instead of olive oil, brown the sage and walnuts in butter. That creates browned butter that you then drain from the nuts & sage and add to the blender with the squash, adding a toasted brown butter flavor (this is what I did). I could also see adding some feta to the blender, or possibly some bacon or pancetta to the situation.

This recipe was too bland for our tastes. Next time I would add some onions, more garlic, some red pepper flakes and a lot of goat cheese.

Somehow forgot to buy parmasan, so substituted with 2 tbsp of hemp seed, table spoon of lemon juice, two tsp of white miso, two tbsp of nutritional yeast. Worked quite well and made the dish vegan.

Not the best marriage of flavors. Perhaps it needs a lot more Parmesan than the recipe calls for but this didn’t taste great. I would do way less sage as well next time. It’s missing something that would round it out. 3/5

Pasta was delicious,my 9 and 6 year old ate it happily and asked for seconds.Highly recomend this recipe

This was so good! I put a ton of extra garlic and threw in some spinach for some extra veggies

Up the aliums! I quadrupled the garlic and added a roughly chopped red onion to the roasted veg. Not having fresh sage, I tossed freshly dried sage on the roasting veg with EVOO, salt, pepper, and a dash of nutmeg. I skipped the stock and blended the veg with Parmesan before adding a little less than a cup of pasta water to thin out the sauce. I dry roasted walnuts and skipped the lemon zest. Amazing.

I roasted and pureed the squash and also toasted the sage and walnut mixture in advance to ease clean up. Wonderful flavor and added some grilled chicken.

Pretty good -- needs salt and fat! Adding excess salt throughout makes up for the first, and next time I'll be adding pancetta to take care of the second. I also doubled the garlic, which was great. I feel like the amount in the recipe would not have been enough. Definitely a keeper, with modifications!

Excellent dish! It was a big, messy production in our little kitchen — using the oven AND stovetop AND food processor etc. — but it produced a really delicious, restaurant-quality plate of pasta. Don’t skimp on the salty, crispy sage topping, it’s a critical counterpoint to the smooth and slightly sweet pasta sauce.

If you like your pasta like you like your baby food, exactly the same in texture in taste, then this is for you. A recommendation for those looking to try this dish, don't.