Vegan Lemon Tahini Broccolini Pasta Dinner

Hey Internet, I've got another delicious recipe for you all today. Fancy Vegan Lemon Tahini Broccolini Pasta!

Pasta (and cheese) are consistently the most popular recipes on our site. I'm so glad you love pasta as much as I do, because I sure love making it.

The tahini and broccolini combination is creamy and dreamy (cue Mr. Zardyplants rolling his eyes), and served over a big bed of pasta.

I used fancy Tagliatelle pasta because I was preparing a romantic dinner for my husband--and when you cook almost all your food (as opposed to eating out), you can choose to spring for a slightly more expensive pasta for a fun presentation and texture.

However, I've also tested this recipe with plain old fettuccine and linguini and it works just fine! :) You can use gluten-free pasta if you need to as well.

This pasta sauce is creamy, tangy, and slightly cheesy with the addition of my vegan Parmesan. The result is a rich, delectable, downright addictive flavor that makes this recipe a hit, especially with the fresh, crisp broccolini / baby broccoli.

Serve this up with some wine or your favorite non alcoholic beverage and maybe even enjoy a sweet treat after like these heart-shaped Brookie Bites.

Ready to talk about how to make this tahini pasta?

What You'll Need

Besides pasta and the water to boil it in, you'll need a few ingredients to make the sauce.

For creaminess I used tahini (I like this tahini) but you could also use cashew butter or another neutral flavored nut or seed butter. I really like tahini pasta because I almost always have some tahini on hand.

Broccolini is a delicious vegetable to eat with this meal. Broccolini, also called baby broccoli, is a longer, thinner, more tender broccoli and its sweeter and even more delicious than it's older sibling.

If you can't find broccolini, you could also use regular broccoli, or other vegetables like asparagus in this recipe.

If you can't find broccolini, you could also use regular broccoli, or other vegetables like asparagus in this recipe.

Lemon juice is a pretty important part of this recipe, too. The fresh citrus really brightens up the flavors and adds a much needed acid to the tahini's rich taste. I used the juice of an additional lemon for the broccolini as well.

I love the roasted garlic in this pasta. It feels fancy. You can use jarred, pre-roasted garlic if you need to, but fresh roasted garlic tastes so amazing I urge you to try it (instructions later in this post).

For spices, I kept it simple and just added salt and pepper to the sauce. I added fresh thyme and my vegan parm as garnish at the end.

Finally, to thin out the sauce I used a little unsweetened nondairy milk. Any will work, just make sure it's not the vanilla flavor (don't ask me how I know…).

How to Make It

This fancy date-night dish is easy enough to make any night.

Roasting the Garlic

Remember how I said we'd talk about how to roast garlic? Let's do that now--it's surprisingly easy.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F (or 205 degrees C) and take a medium sized head of garlic and peel off the outer skins. Cut ¼ inch off the top with a sharp knife so that the tips of the garlic are exposed.

You can either wrap it in tin foil completely, wrap it in parchment and then tin foil (if you're avoiding aluminum), or pop it in a muffin tin and just lightly cover the garlic with the foil.

Bake it for about 30 minutes or until you can sink the tine of a fork all the way through one of the cloves. Let it cool for a minute, then squeeze the garlic out into your blender or a small dish to save for later.

You could do this up to a few days in advance to save time! Simply store it in an airtight container in the fridge--but squeeze it out before it cools because it's much easier to do that when the garlic is still warm.

Pasta Time!

Now let's make the pasta. Boil the pasta as instructed on the package and drain it.

While the pasta is cooking, make your sauce by dumping the sauce ingredients in a blender and combining until smooth.

Cooking the broccolini

After that, cook your broccolini / baby broccoli by adding it to a rimmed skillet with ½ cup of water. Before cooking it, trim 1" off the ends of the broccolini as those parts are a little tougher.

When the broccolini is almost soft enough to eat, squeeze a lemon over it and toss it a bit. When it's cooked to your liking, remove it from heat.

Then all that's left is to serve it up on a plate, top it with some vegan parm and fresh thyme, and sit down to a lovely dinner.

Anything Else?

As always, I hope you love my Vegan Lemon Tahini Broccolini Pasta recipe!

Let me know in the comments below if you make it, tag me @Zardyplants on Instagram so I can see your beautiful recreations! If you tag me on IG, I will share your post in my stories :)

Also, one quick request: if you love how this recipe looks or tastes, please leave me a 5-star rating and a nice comment–ratings help more people find my recipes which helps me keep providing them! Thank you!

<3 LIZ

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