Creamy Miso Pasta

• Sweating the mushrooms first allows you to thoroughly brown them without burning the garlic.
• After being parboiled, the spaghetti is finished in the sauce, like risotto. This allows the noodles to absorb the flavors of the sauce without going soggy. It also releases starch from the spaghetti into the sauce, stabilizing the miso butter and forming a creamy emulsion.
• The emulsified miso butter coats each strand of spaghetti in a luxuriously creamy sauce that almost tastes like it was made with Parmesan cheese and heavy cream.

Key Ingredients

• Pasta – With long, slender strands ideal for clinging to our creamy miso sauce, spaghetti provides a delightful base perfect for twirling around your fork. Other types of pasta, such as linguine, fettuccine, or penne, will also work great.
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil – Although the sauce contains butter, it is not a good idea to use it to brown the mushrooms as the milk solids will burn, and the excess fat will make your miso sauce greasy. 
• Garlic – Lots of garlic adds a pungent bite that contrasts the creaminess of the dish. If you don’t have any fresh garlic cloves, a half teaspoon garlic powder can be used in a pinch.  
• Mushrooms – Mushrooms add a meaty texture and umami flavors to silky sauce. White button mushrooms work well for this miso pasta recipe, but any flavorful fungi like cremini, Portobello, shiitake, or maitake mushrooms will work just as well.
• White Miso – The star of our pasta sauce is white miso paste. Aside from seasoning the sauce, it also contributes an umami element while lending a rich cheesy flavor. 
• Unsalted Butter – The other half of our miso butter sauce is butter. When emulsified with the starchy pasta water and miso, it creates a smooth sauce that envelopes each strand of spaghetti in creamy butter. Because the miso contains a lot of salt, it’s important to use unsalted butter. Using cultured butter will take this creamy miso pasta recipe to the next level thanks to it’s cheesy aroma. To make this recipe plant-based you can substitute vegan butter.
• Snap Peas – Crisp snap peas contribute a fresh, sweet contrast to the creamy pasta, adding color and texture. Snow peas, green peas, asparagus, green onions, or broccoli are all excellent alternatives here.  
• Garnish – Garnish the finished pasta with some chopped Italian parsley or chives for a pop of color, or if you want to kick up the heat, try sprinkling on some freshly cracked black pepper or red pepper flakes.

How to make Miso Pasta

The first step is to mash together room-temperature unsalted butter with the white miso until you have a smooth paste. This mixture will keep for weeks and can be used to season a wide variety of dishes, so you can make a large batch of miso butter and store it in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

Next, boil the spaghetti in a large pot of water seasoned with a generous amount of salt for two minutes less than what the package instructions say. You want to undercook the pasta so it doesn’t get soggy as it cooks together with the creamy miso sauce.

While the noodles cook, heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and add the mushrooms, sautéing them over medium heat. This initial sweating of the mushrooms draws out moisture, concentrating their flavor. Now add the minced garlic to the sautéed mushrooms and continue cooking them until they start to brown around the edges.

When the timer goes off, transfer the cooked pasta directly to the pan with the mushrooms and add a cup of pasta water along with snap peas. Finish cooking the spaghetti as if you are making risotto, stirring it continuously while adding additional cups of pasta water as the liquid evaporates. As the noodles release starch you’ll notice the starch from the noodles creates a creamier sauce that will help stabilize the miso butter that’s about to join the pan.

When the spaghetti is cooked to your liking, add the miso butter to the pan, vigorously mixing it into the noodles to create an emulsion with the remaining liquid. As the miso butter melts, the fat in the butter forms microscopic droplets that disperse evenly through the starchy sauce forming a stable emulsion. This not only prevents the sauce from separating but also ensures that each strand of pasta gets coated in the rich, velvety sauce. If at any point things start to dry out, simply add a little more pasta water to maintain the creamy consistency.

Garnish the pasta with chopped parsley, pepper flakes, or green onions to taste and serve immediately.