Many families turn to pasta on busy nights. While we love wheat noodles as much as the next person, zucchini is soft enough to cut into the perfect spirals, and its neutral flavor makes it great as a pasta substitute! This zucchini pasta is topped with a creamy avocado sauce with basil and lemon. It’s a true celebration of garden flavors. After making this so many times, I can confirm it works equally well with store-bought zoodles as it does with homemade ones.
Here’s what you’ll need
For The Pesto: You’ll need an avocado, garlic, fresh basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Readers have had great success using dried basil and whole lemon slices cooked in the sauce and then removed. You might also need water to thin out the sauce. Zucchini: Any large zucchini variety works well. These get sauteed in a bit of olive until bright green.
let’s make zucchini pasta
why not boil zucchini noodles?
While you would usually boil pasta, don’t go that route here! Boiling zucchini leaches out water-soluble vitamins (vitamin C and B6 in the case of zucchini). Instead, saute the zucchini noodles on the stove with a touch of olive oil until they are soft.
alternative sauce options
I love this creamy avocado sauce, but here are a few other options.
Romesco is simple to make at home so if you have extra, toss it with zoodles. Marinara can be made with fresh tomatoes or bought in-store for a quick dinner. Traditional pesto uses a similar technique to this avocado pesto but with parmesan for creaminess.
