Looking to spend some time in the kitchen to make a good old fashioned homemade dinner? This homemade spinach pasta with garlic dill sauce is exactly what we food lovers crave!
My mom used to make thick, rich egg noodles and cook them with chicken ever since I can remember, so I’ve always thought of them as an essential comfort food, and I was worried when I married Gabe, a man with many food allergies, most prominently gluten, that my beloved egg noodles would be a thing of the past.
But it turned out gluten-free egg noodles are actually very easy to make!
But it’s funny, in all the years I’ve been cooking, I just never got around to making homemade spinach pasta – until this year.
spinach pasta is an egg noodle base, with the addition of spinach puree.
Honestly, while egg noodles in general feel like a winter comfort food to me, homemade spinach pasta is actually perfect for spring – not because they’re green, but because that green comes from early spring spinach, and because they’re full of the eggs (or egg yolks if you want to get really fancy) those chickens just can’t stop laying right now.
I love these beautiful, delicious spinach egg noodles with all my heart.
I love how easy it is to make a small batch that stretches on forever and ends up being a much bigger batch than you expected, and how easy it is then, to lay the extras out to dry for another time.
I’m all about “killing two birds with one stone” that way. In fact, I have a zip-top baggie full of them in my pantry now, just waiting to be used up.
When we first made these, my kids enjoyed helping to roll them out and cut them into strips, but they were sure they wouldn’t like the way they tasted. Spinach in pasta? A kid’s worst nightmare!
But they did. They loved it! Even with the garlic dill sauce.
I loved this sauce because it takes only a few minutes to come together and is packed with flavor. The fact that it allows the beautiful color of homemade spinach pasta to shine through is just an added bonus.
Tips for making Homemade Spinach Pasta with Garlic Dill Sauce
- Use the same principles in our gluten-free egg noodle recipe to make this pasta gluten-free. It’s just as easy! I will say though, that you will need to increase the cook time of gluten-free noodles by a few minutes.
- This recipe calls for using parmesan cheese, but I also like to use Cotija cheese, which is actually what you see in the pictures. It has a slightly sharper, saltier flavor than mozzarella. I’m not sure how widely available it is though. I know we have a fair amount of Mexican food in our grocery stores that other areas don’t necessarily have.
- Use the pasta recipe for any recipe you want – not just with garlic-dill sauce! It’s fantastic in homemade chicken noodle soup.
Making your own pasta is time consuming, but for me, it’s cathartic. It’s not something I do for practical reasons. I do it when I have time, and when I want to. For nostalgia, for family togetherness, and for the joy of doing it. And I hope that’s what you find in this recipe too.
Homemade Spinach Pasta with Garlic Dill Sauce
Ingredients
- 5 oz. spinach
- 3 eggs or 6 egg yolks
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour, plus additional flour for rolling
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 1 Tablespoon dill weed
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1 cup milk
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
- Salt and pepper
- Parmesan cheese
Instructions
For the pasta:
- Steam spinach lightly, just until it’s wilted. There shouldn’t be any excess water when it’s done, but it there is, squeeze it out.
- Transfer to blender or food processor with eggs and pulse until smooth
- In a bowl, combine flour and salt
- Pour spinach/egg mixture over flour, and combine
- When well combined, transfer dough to a floured surface. I like to do this with 1/2 of the dough at a time as the whole batch can get rather large and unwieldy
- Roll until dime-thin – or as thinly as you can. Remember – the flour is there to help keep the dough from sticking to your rolling pin and counter-top, but use as little as you can to also keep your dough from becoming tough, rubbery, and difficult to roll out.
- Once dough it thin enough, cut into strips. You can make these as wide or narrow as you please. I aimed for fettuccine-width in the pictures shown, and you can see how wide they got after cooking.
- Cook noodles in a pot of boiling water for 5-7 minutes if serving immediately, or lay out on a flour sack towel to dry for later.
To make the sauce:
- Mince garlic and sauté in olive oil for 1 minute
- Add dill weed
- Add broth, and onion powder
- Simmer until broth reduces by about 25%
- Combine milk, and cornstarch
- Add to simmering sauce, stirring until thickened
- Add salt and pepper to taste
- Add freshly-cooked pasta
To serve: Top with parmesan cheese
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