A hearty plate of pasta makes for a comforting meal on a chilly fall night. Pasta is a great way to showcase some of fall’s best flavors: squash, cauliflower, kale, and much more. From rich sweet potato gnocchi with cream sauce to tagliatelle with a meaty duck ragù, we’ve rounded up our favorite fall pasta recipes.
Gnocchi take wonderfully to fall flavors. Sweet potatoes are an autumnal staple, so try adding them to a gnocchi dough. A gorgonzola cream sauce adds a funky lightness to balance the dumplings. Our earthy farro gnocchi is paired with a pork ragù sure to warm you up. For a Domican twist, try making gnocchi with plantains and yucca and serving them with a rich short rib ragù.
Brown butter has a deep, nutty flavor that evokes fall without being too heavy. It’s an easy way to punch up a simple bowl of fresh pasta with pine nuts. We use a mustard brown butter to sauce our pappardelle with charred cauliflower and fried capers. Brown butter is also at home on spinach spätzli with pangrattato bread crumbs.
Kale is one of our go-to vegetables once the temperature drops. Hearty kale pairs with sweet Italian sausage and penne is a pasta dish balanced with a lemon cream sauce and a touch of chile flake heat. Tender baby kale gets tossed into our pappardelle with butternut squash and walnuts right at the end of cooking so as to just slightly wilt it.
Find all of these dishes and more in our collection of fall pasta recipes.
Unlike the heavy red-sauced lasagnas served in America, this Abruzzo-style version relies on an ethereal egg and tomato sauce that puffs when the lasagna is cooked, giving it a soufflé-like appearance.
Ripe plantains and yucca stand in for potatoes in this version of gnocchi from the Dominican Republic, which is served with short rib ragù. A long, slow braise with red wine, cayenne, and paprika results in tender, fall-off-the-bone morsels of meat; bolstered with cream, the rich sauce is then ladled over the slightly sweet, fluffy dumplings. Get the recipe for Plantain Gnocchi with Short Rib Ragù »
This is a pasta dish of strong flavors: dark, earthy kale is offset by bright lemon cream and a warm, aromatic heat from crushed red chiles and garlic.
Porcini mushrooms, white wine, and fresh herbs flavor this satisfying pasta dish, which was adapted from Lidia Bastianich’s cookbook Lidia’s Italy (Knopf, 2007).
Nothing says love like homemade pasta. Lidia Bastianich’s recipe mixes tender, sweet Bartlett pears with sharp pecorino and creamy mascarpone to make a rich filling for ravioli.
