This vegan Red Wine Pasta is perfect for wine lovers on a date night, and is ready start to finish in about 20 minutes.
Picture the following: You have a date, you’re supposed to cook, and you only have about 20 minutes to get the food ready.
What do you do? Panic? (Yes, of course.)
Call for a restaurant reservation? (Maybe.)
However, there’s another option. Are you ready for this? You can make fancy pasta.
That’s right– pasta that looks terribly impressive, but in reality only takes a few minutes longer to prepare than plain old spaghetti marinara. This Red Wine Pasta is vegan, flavorful, and incredibly quick to prepare.
What Kind of Wine Should I Use?
Choose a wine that you like, since you’ll definitely taste the flavor, but it doesn’t have to be pricey. I usually grab a Winking Owl wine from Aldi for this meal, and save my favorite wine to pour in a glass along with dinner.
Quick Tip: This pasta… tastes like wine. Shocking, I know. Fair warning- If you don’t care for wine, you probably won’t like the pasta!
How to Make Red Wine Pasta
Red Wine Pasta is incredibly simple to make. You need spaghetti, a bottle of dry red wine,* some diced tomatoes, and a few capers. To start, first, get a big pot of salted water ready. Next, start prepping the sauce of tomatoes and… ahem.. wine, and let the wine simmer for a few minutes.
Toss your dried pasta into the salted water, cook it for just a few minutes, and then transfer it to the wine sauce and let it finish cooking there. Toss it all together, and ‘ta da!’– you’ve got a fancy-schmancy pasta dinner.
Quick Tip: Avoid trying to cook the pasta from start to finish inside the wine sauce. It won’t cook correctly, and the finished pasta will be clumpy and overly starchy. No one wants that (especially not on date night!)
Pair your dinner with a cocktail, some chocolate truffles, and the rest of your date is up to you!
Red Wine Pasta
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Ingredients
- 1 lb spaghetti or angel hair pasta
- 1 TB olive oil
- 1 leek, sliced (or sub 1 diced yellow onion)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 can diced tomatoes (28oz)
- 1 750 ml bottle dry red wine
- 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
- ~ 1/4 cup capers
- Optional Toppings: sliced kalamata olives, freshly grated Parmesan, goat cheese crumbles, vegan Parmesan
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
- Meanwhile, in a large deep-sided pan or wok, sauté leeks and salt until softened on medium heat. Add garlic and stir (about 1 min).
- Add tomatoes, and allow to simmer 2-3 minutes. Add the entire bottle of wine. Bring mixture a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to medium and stir constantly.
- Add pasta to salted water, and cook for about 4 minutes, until pasta is al dente. DO NOT DRAIN PASTA. Instead, use a pasta ladle to take pasta out of water, shaking lightly to get rid of excess water, and set pasta into wine (being careful not to splash). Do not drain pasta water.
- Toss pasta into sauce, mixing until pasta has finished cooking and sauce is thoroughly incorporated.Note: Depending on the type of wine used, you may find that your pasta isn't as dark red as you would like. If this happens, add a little tomato sauce to make it redder.
- If your pasta seems too dry, ladle over some of the reserved pasta water, 1/4 cup at a time, until it looks creamy.
- Add crushed red pepper, cayenne, capers and optional toppings.
Nutrition
Recipe adapted from: Food.com
How fun, what a great idea! Love that it’s quick and easy too – this would be perfect for Date Night!
What an interesting idea! Never thought of doing that with red wine. Must try.
Fun idea for a date night! I bet the color and flavor are terrific in person:)
Love the flavours you have in this pasta! Especially the red wine as it goes with pasta so well
You had me at red wine! This looks delish and something that my husband would love! I think I’ll surprise him next week!
Let me know how it goes! Enjoy!
This will be so great for Valentine’s day! I <3 Aldi too.
A whole bottle of red wine?! I’m in. And then I can have a glass on the side too right? Sounds like a pretty awesome date night to me.
Totally- you can have the wine in the food AND with the food. Seems reasonable lol
What a cool idea!