Dinner, Recipes · October 3, 2021

Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce with Spaghetti

Name: Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce with spaghetti
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ingredients: 3 cloves of garlic, grated; 1 small shallot, minced; 5 Tbsp. of butter; 1 Tbsp. lemon zest (About two lemons); 1/3 cup heavy cream; 1 cup parmesan cheese, shredded; 1/3 cup pasta water; 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice (I squeeze half a lemon over it and go with that. As long as your lemons are ripe, that will do.); 2 Tbsp. fresh basil, chopped; 1 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves; 2 Tbsp. of olive oil; Optional: Red pepper flakes; Water for pasta; 2 tsp. salt for the water; 1 box spaghetti

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Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce is the stuff that dreams are made of. It’s delicious, it’s simple and it is a restaurant style meal right at home.

That Pasta fix

Sometimes I get frustrated with the lack of Italian options in Grand Rapids so I started making pasta recipes every Sunday on my personal Instagram @rachelquenzer. It’s been a way for me to do a couple of things:

Eat delicious Italian food at least once a week
Have a day where I will eat ALL THE CARBS and not feel guilty
Help me to get more familiar with my Italian roots and push my creativity when it comes to creating sauces and pasta dishes.

And while I wouldn’t call Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce with Spaghetti overly creative, 🙂 I would call it Italian Girl Comfort Food. It gives me my fix of carbs for the week and Kevin says, “It tastes better than a restaurant anyways.” So maybe Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce is Irish Boy Comfort Food too? He certainly prefers it to corned beef and cabbage.

Creamy dreamy flavor

The flavor of the Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce is like a dream come true. It’s very buttery with a light touch of lemon, a splash of cream and some . It won’t feel like a heavy sauce like my Homemade Alfredo Sauce. Instead, it will just coat the pasta nicely and give you all the flavor without weighing you down.

Unlike a sauce that’s meant for fish like my Shrimp Scampi, my Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce is meant specifically for pasta. In fact, you don’t even add the parmesan in until the pasta is in the pot with the sauce.

And even though it is a lighter kind of sauce, it will still coat the pasta well and you’ll have that beautiful flavor in each bite.

Making Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce with spaghetti

Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce is about a 20-minute recipe. Aside from the taste, that’s my favorite thing about it. For us, Sunday is often anything but a day of rest. At the farm, it’s a day when we catch up on chores. We always have a lot to do and by 3:30 – quitting time – I’m exhausted and don’t want to cook. Making quick pastas is really another bonus for Pasta Sunday.

Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta sauce combines garlic, shallots, butter (of course!), lemon zest, lemon juice, cream and parmesan. Once you heat the butter and soften the shallots and garlic, it’s really just about combining the other ingredients to create a rich and buttery sauce and adding salt and pepper to taste.

Tips for making Creamy Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce

Use good quality extra virgin olive oil.
Use sea salt when seasoning. It just adds so much more flavor.
Keep the heat medium to low in the pan to avoid burning the butter.
Make sure to zest just the yellow part of the lemon skin. You don’t want the white part.
You can make this with any kind of noodles you like but I recommend something that’s long like spaghetti versus a penne or rigatoni.

Thank you so much for visiting today! I hope you enjoy today’s pasta recipe. You can find the full, printable recipe for the Cream Lemon Butter Pasta Sauce with spaghetti below. And if you love easy spaghetti recipes, check out this delicious White Wine Butter Sauce with Blistered tomatoes {HERE}. Happy eating!