Silken tofu gives this family-friendly pasta its wonderfully creamy texture, as well as lots of protein – the dish has 21g of protein per person. Also the hemp seeds are a great source of omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids.
Notes
Silken tofu is generally always soft, but sometimes it’s also labelled ‘soft’ or ‘hard’, in which case we recommend buying the soft version.
You can easily make this recipe gluten-free using gluten-free pasta.
We use rigatoni pasta, which is one of our favourites – but any type of pasta will do.
If you don’t have a high speed blender, we recommend soaking your cashews in hot water for at least 30 minutes to help soften them.
High Protein Spinach Pasta
Serves:4 peoplePrep Time:Cooking Time:
Nutrition facts:200 calories20 grams fat
Rating: 3.9/5
( 23 voted )
Ingredients
320g (11.3oz) pasta, or use gluten-free pasta
salt + pepper
250g (8.8oz) baby spinach
350g (12.3oz) silken tofu
4 tbsp nutritional yeast
40g (1.4oz) cashews, see notes
60g (2.1oz) hemp seeds, shelled or milled
2 garlic cloves, peeled
olive oil
vegan parmesan, to serve (optional)
Instructions
Cook the pasta in a pot of salted boiling water as per the packet instructions. Once the pasta is ready, drain it and reserve about half a cup of the pasta water for later.
Meanwhile, add the spinach to a pan on a medium heat and cook for 2-3 minutes or until wilted. Add a tablespoon of pasta water to the spinach if it’s sticking to the pan.
Next, transfer the spinach to a high speed blender along with the silken tofu, nutritional yeast, cashews, hemp seeds, garlic, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and generous pinches of salt and pepper. Blend until the sauce is smooth, adding a tablespoon or so of the reserved pasta water to the sauce, if needed, to loosen it up.
Pour the spinach sauce into the pan you used earlier and heat it on a low temperature until warm. Tip the pasta into the sauce and stir to combine.
Serve the pasta with a drizzle of olive oil, an extra pinch of pepper and some grated vegan parmesan, if you like.
We haven’t tested this, but we’re sure it will be absolutely fine to freeze and reheat the sauce. We’d recommend adding some pasta water to the sauce when reheating because you might want to loosen it up a little.
Can you give all the measurements in volumes? Weight is basically useless for most people as most people don’t have kitchen scales.
For the tofu, which is sold by weight, that might be fine – but this recipe doesn’t use a standard size, as far as I can tell even for the UK, rendering the weight there also nearly useless.
This recipe is great! But why make it so difficult for everyone to use?
Hi B. The silken tofu we buy from our local supermarket (Tesco) comes in 350g packets and it’s a popular brand. Here in the UK (which is where we are from), it’s very common to list ingredients by weight, not volume. Sometimes we do list ingredients by volume when we don’t need to be precise, but even then we get lots of messages from our UK followers asking for the weight instead. We hope you understand.
Most people don’t have kitchen scales? Strangest thing I’ve read all week. Even if you live in a wooden shack in the forest you can still have kitchen scales…you’re also pretty rude, try to be nicer.
I work out grams to cups online just by googling. Tonight I’m cooking so I’ve worked out that it’s 1.5 1/4cup milled hempseeds, 1/4 cup cashews. The spinach I’m guessing is 2 large handfuls from my garden or a bag. Hope this helps
The longer you cook, the more you appreciate folks that use a scale for weighing out ingredients. Take a bunch of kale or a head of cauliflower, really, how standard are those, providing a weight makes life easier. And a decent scale doesn’t cost that much money and doesn’t take up much real estate in your kitchen.
I don’t like spinach in raw form but like to try healthy pasta sauces with veggies. This turned out much better than expected. I actually really liked the spinach taste in the sauce. Easy and healthy and made lots of leftovers. Added roasted garlic. Next time might add roasted shallot and try cottage cheese instead of tofu.
Just made this!! How do you store this if you want to use it as a meal prep meal for the week?
Also, for those making this, Make sure to add a little lemon juice, basil & parsley, it made it sooo flavorful.
Thanks Sarah! This pasta isn’t necessarily ideal for meal-prep, but it’ll keep for a couple of days in the fridge if stored in an air-tight container. Hope that helps!
We made this last night and it was SO delicious! I second the comment about topping it with a squeeze of lemon. I also added nutritional yeast to serve since I didn’t have vegan parm. I think adding fresh herbs next time would be nice as well. Thanks for such a delicious and simple recipe!
Delicious!! I used a combination of cashews, sunflower seeds and blanched almonds (as that’s what I had on hand) for the nuts/seeds, added a quarter cup of peas to the blended sauce because I was a bit short on spinach and served with protein pasta and some more peas. I also added a squeeze of lemon juice at the end which really brightened up the flavours nicely. Super quick and easy to make, great flavour and of course nutritious! Highly recommend!
34 Comments
Made this tonight and it was so delicious!! I added basil on top and it was delicious!! Thank you
Thank you!
I made this with some of my own touches from the ingredients I had – it turned out really good! Thank you!
Will this sauce handle well being frozen and thawed?
Can let me know what the nutritional facts are? I really want to make this!
Hi Mela, we don’t include the nutritional information on our website sorry, but all this information is available on our app 🙂
We haven’t tested this, but we’re sure it will be absolutely fine to freeze and reheat the sauce. We’d recommend adding some pasta water to the sauce when reheating because you might want to loosen it up a little.
Can you give all the measurements in volumes? Weight is basically useless for most people as most people don’t have kitchen scales.
For the tofu, which is sold by weight, that might be fine – but this recipe doesn’t use a standard size, as far as I can tell even for the UK, rendering the weight there also nearly useless.
This recipe is great! But why make it so difficult for everyone to use?
Hi B. The silken tofu we buy from our local supermarket (Tesco) comes in 350g packets and it’s a popular brand. Here in the UK (which is where we are from), it’s very common to list ingredients by weight, not volume. Sometimes we do list ingredients by volume when we don’t need to be precise, but even then we get lots of messages from our UK followers asking for the weight instead. We hope you understand.
You should get a scale. You are wasting time and dishes without one! Volume measuring way more inaccurate too.
Most people don’t have kitchen scales? Strangest thing I’ve read all week. Even if you live in a wooden shack in the forest you can still have kitchen scales…you’re also pretty rude, try to be nicer.
I work out grams to cups online just by googling. Tonight I’m cooking so I’ve worked out that it’s 1.5 1/4cup milled hempseeds, 1/4 cup cashews. The spinach I’m guessing is 2 large handfuls from my garden or a bag. Hope this helps
The longer you cook, the more you appreciate folks that use a scale for weighing out ingredients. Take a bunch of kale or a head of cauliflower, really, how standard are those, providing a weight makes life easier. And a decent scale doesn’t cost that much money and doesn’t take up much real estate in your kitchen.
I made it for lunch! Absolutely delicious! I will definitely make it again!
Thanks!
one of my kids has a nut allergy, do you recommend replacing the cashews with something else or just leaving them out?
If you have a fast-powered blender, you can use sunflower seeds instead!
So excited to make this recipe. Is the silken tofu soft or firm please?
If the silken tofu is labelled soft or firm, we recommend buying the soft version!
I don’t like spinach in raw form but like to try healthy pasta sauces with veggies. This turned out much better than expected. I actually really liked the spinach taste in the sauce. Easy and healthy and made lots of leftovers. Added roasted garlic. Next time might add roasted shallot and try cottage cheese instead of tofu.
We made this for dinner tonight looking for some variety in our vegan pasta meals and it was lovely and very easy to make 🙂
Just made this!! How do you store this if you want to use it as a meal prep meal for the week?
Also, for those making this, Make sure to add a little lemon juice, basil & parsley, it made it sooo flavorful.
Thanks Sarah! This pasta isn’t necessarily ideal for meal-prep, but it’ll keep for a couple of days in the fridge if stored in an air-tight container. Hope that helps!
Love how easy this was and so healthy! I added 1 tbsp white miso (because UMAMI) and 1/2 tbsp lemon juice to brighten it a bit. Thank you!!
Hello! If I wanted to make this but didn’t have hemp seeds is there an easy substitution?
Hi Sandy. We recommend a small handful of walnuts, which are also a great source of omegas.
We made this last night and it was SO delicious! I second the comment about topping it with a squeeze of lemon. I also added nutritional yeast to serve since I didn’t have vegan parm. I think adding fresh herbs next time would be nice as well. Thanks for such a delicious and simple recipe!
Excited to try this one! Do you think frozen (but thawed in advance) spinach would work? xx
Really disappointed in this one after reading all the positive comments – this has essentially no taste followed by the recipe.
Add more salt and pepper
add salt
I added some pesto! It’s such a good sauce.
This is so easy and sooo tasty. Thank you so much. Will 100% be adding this to my regular dinners list!
Delicious!! I used a combination of cashews, sunflower seeds and blanched almonds (as that’s what I had on hand) for the nuts/seeds, added a quarter cup of peas to the blended sauce because I was a bit short on spinach and served with protein pasta and some more peas. I also added a squeeze of lemon juice at the end which really brightened up the flavours nicely. Super quick and easy to make, great flavour and of course nutritious! Highly recommend!