This saucy recipe is a fancy favorite. It's a simple pasta dish that takes about 30 minutes to make: perfectly cooked fettuccine coated with a creamy mushroom sauce mixed with parmesan cheese, fresh herbs, and a squeeze of tangy lemon. The mushrooms sautéed in truffle butter with black truffle paste add that delicious, earthy truffle flavor without breaking the bank. An easy, delish, and affordable special occasion dinner that anyone can make.
Need to use up some mushrooms? Try this bacon and mushroom carbonara, my favorite truffle mushroom risotto (so good!), or crispy garlic mushroom pasta with creamy burrata!
A Black Truffle Pasta with Mushroom Cream Sauce made Easy
We do date night in a lot, especially on important 'date' days like Valentine's Day, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a plate of food at a crowded overworked restaurant...and the champagne? *cue the Dominique Deveraux!* It's burnt (probably).
I can do fancy at home too! I actually found some ingredients that cut those prices way down while still keeping the bougie around.
This is the recipe if you want to feel fancy on a budget; it's simple yet packed full of flavor, made extra special thanks to the amount of truffle products we are using.
Hey, truffle ain't cheap! But products made with them, like the truffle butter and truffle paste, are much more affordable. Their earthy flavor mixes with the savory parm and garlic, and amplify the fresh mushrooms we're using in our creamy truffle sauce.
My creamy pasta recipe has plenty of flavor, and is perfect as a weeknight or date night dinner. It's so easy to make any beginner cook can impress their boo with it!
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Jump to:
- A Black Truffle Pasta with Mushroom Cream Sauce made Easy
- Why You'll Love this Creamy Pasta with Black Truffle
- Equipment
- Truffle Spread versus Truffle Oil
- Ingredients
- Let's Make Mushroom Truffle Pasta!
- What is Blooming in Oil?
- Variations and Substitutions
- Pro Tips for the Best Creamy Truffle Pasta
- What to Serve with Truffle Mushroom Pasta
- Storage and Reheating
- FAQs
- More Date Night Pasta Recipes
- Creamy Truffle Mushroom Pasta Recipe
- Storage and Reheating
Why You'll Love this Creamy Pasta with Black Truffle
- The perfect last minute date night meal - this is a fast and easy recipe, no need to slave over a stove all night to perfect dinner. While I wouldn't say they're simple ingredients, we've really only a handful of them!
- The perfect side or base to bulk up your meal... - this is great to revamp leftover proteins or serve on the side of a great steak....or just as fabulous as a meatless dinner!
- Nothing hard to learn here! - you're sautéing mushrooms and blooming the flavors of the truffle spread, garlic, and herbs in the fat. Nothing super fancy technique-wise, but you end up with serious reward.
Equipment
- Mushroom Brush - this little tool is amazing to clean off the dirt on your mushrooms.
- Garlic Press - I haven't minced by hand all year! just crush your garlic through a press and keep it moving.
- Microplane - this is perfect for grating the lemon and parmesan for serving.
- Citrus Juicer - If you're like me and don't want sticky citrus juice on you and everywhere, a squeezy juicer is the best.
- Large Pan - I use this braiser like a sauté pan all the time! It's wide and perfect to cook down big batches of ingredients like mushrooms or onions without overcrowding the pan.
- A Large Pot or Dutch Oven - to boil your noods in.
- A Wooden Spoon for stirring
- Tongs to transfer the pasta and toss them in the sauce.
Truffle Spread versus Truffle Oil
Truffle oil is commonly used in recipes, but many store-bought versions lack real truffles due to their perishable nature. Instead, they often contain a petroleum-derived compound called 2,4-dithiapentane to mimic truffle flavor, they have no truffle at all.
Fresh truffle spreads combine real truffles with mushrooms, occasionally featuring additional ingredients like garlic or cheese. Resembling olive tapenade in texture, these spreads are ideal for enhancing umami flavors in many dishes, such as spreading on crostinis or incorporating into sauces. In this recipe, the truffle spread effortlessly mixes into the sauce and amps up the flavor!
Ingredients
Full ingredients, measurements, and printable instructions are in the recipe card at the bottom of this post.
- Fettuccine Pasta - Cream sauces like those wider noodles, so linguini and pappardelle pasta also work well here.
- Sliced Mushrooms - I used crimini mushrooms (also called baby bella) but you can use any type of mushroom you like.
- Butter - I use regular butter to cook the mushrooms in, they soak up the flavor of the oil they're cooked in, why not be butter?!
- Fresh Thyme - Love the lemony, herby thyme as another flavor component to the umami-rich mushroom cream sauce. Be warned, fresh thyme has a lot of water content and pops in hot fat.
- Garlic Cloves for minced garlic - I personally like using a garlic press to make things a millions times quicker and easier.
- Heavy Whipping Cream - this is the base of our cream sauce, it has a high fat percentage that really holds the flavors we're adding to it!
- Lemon - we're using the juice and some grated lemon zest as well here. The juice has the tang while the skin holds the oils that give that real 'lemon' flavor.
- Truffle Spread - I find mine at a local grocery store, but you can also buy them online! I do not use truffle oil because there is no actual truffle in the oils.
- Truffle Butter - Another local find for me, but truffle butter can be found online or at specialty stores.
- Parmesan Cheese - I say it every time: use a real wedge! It doesn't have to be imported, but get a wedge and not the canned stuff covered in cellulose, it just doesn't melt well and we don't want a clumpy sauce.
- Kosher Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper
- Fresh Parsley - I know many people don't know what parsley actually tastes like, but it has a fresh, herbaceous flavor that's a little peppery. I really love it on rich dishes.
Let's Make Mushroom Truffle Pasta!
Step 1 | Bring salted water to a boil, We're going to cook the pasta until it reaches an al dente texture. Next, work on the mushrooms for your pasta sauce.
Once a few tablespoons of butter (and 1 tablespoon of truffle butter) is melted in a large pan, add the mushrooms and about 1 teaspoon of truffle spread and cook over medium heat until the mushrooms are cooked through, about 6-7 minutes. Add in garlic and fresh thyme at the last minute giving the flavors a quick bloom in the oil, and add your noodles to the pot of boiling water.
Step 2 | Let's make the sauce! Add the heavy cream and 1 tablespoon of the truffle spread to the cooked mushroom pan, and reduce over medium/medium-low heat until the sauce is reduced by half (or to the consistency you like), about 8-10 minutes, adding in the lemon juice towards the end.
Turn the heat off and add in the grated parmesan cheese. Make sure to stir the sauce well!
Step 3 | Add 1 tablespoon of truffle butter to the sauce, then take the cooked pasta from the pasta water directly into the mushroom truffle sauce using a pasta spoon or tongs. That pasta water clinging to the noodles will give the sauce a bit more body and their heat will melt the residual butter.
Step 4 | Give everything a taste and season with salt and pepper before serving with extra grated lemon zest, parmesan, and some fresh parsley.
What is Blooming in Oil?
In Step 2, you noticed we added the garlic and thyme to the fat in the pan of mushrooms. This is to give if a quick infuse of their flavors before continuing on with the rest of the recipe, also called blooming, though traditional blooming is for a longer time to bring out more flavors.
This is often done for garlic, herbs, and spices -- ingredients that are fat-soluble so the fats they're cooking in will take on their flavors as well. This is great for sauces: so when the fat is mixed through the entire sauce, that flavor is completely incorporated as well.
Variations and Substitutions
- Instead of dried pasta, try making some homemade fresh pasta! It'll definitely take this fancy-ish recipe to the next level.
- If you're team non-dairy, a non-dairy cream like cashew cream works great as well as plant butter. Use your favorite parm replacement, too!
- Use a variety of mushrooms if you want! I've made this dish with cremini and white button mushrooms, lion's mane, oysters, and king trumpet mushrooms and they've all been delicious.
- Want to really impress your guests and get a little fancy? Try carefully shaving or grating fresh truffles on top of the pasta! Just be warned: fresh truffles are incredibly potent so a little bit goes a long way.
Pro Tips for the Best Creamy Truffle Pasta
Toss the pasta so the sauce coats every nood and they can soak it up!
Try to time the pasta to be done alongside the sauce, so check those package directions and get the water boiling before starting on your mushrooms.
What to Serve with Truffle Mushroom Pasta
Grab a bottle of great wine. A fabulous white wine like Chardonnay with buttery vanilla notes, or a soft Merlot would be perfect matches for this creamy, savory truffle pasta.
This is a great main dish, but it's also a wonderful side dish to a delicious rib-eye steak, an elevated version of classic roasted chicken, or sautéed prawns.
Try topping it with a poached egg. It gives a restaurant touch with that runny, rich egg yolk! Top it with a sprinkle of Maldon flaky salt and *chef's kiss*.
Storage and Reheating
- Storing: When storing any leftover, put the sauce and leftover pasta into the fridge in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
- Reheat: Reheat on the stove top over medium-low with a hearty splash of water or broth and stir frequently for about 10 minutes or until warmed through and ready to eat.
- Freezing: Because this is a cream sauce, our yummy truffle pasta recipe does not freeze well. Fridge only!
FAQs
The taste of truffles is often described as musky, earthy, with strong umami notes. They really have a unique flavor that even differs based on whether you eat white or black truffles and summer or winter truffles! When using fresh truffle, a little goes a very, very long way flavor-wise.
My favorite place to buy fresh truffles is regalisfoods.com which has an array of very fancy ingredients, it's quite impressive!
More Date Night Pasta Recipes
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Creamy Truffle Mushroom Pasta Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 ounces fettuccine pasta, dried
- 3 tablespoon butter
- 8 ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced
- 3 tablespoon truffle spread, divided
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- ¾ cup heavy cream
- 1 lemon, juice of
- ½ cup parmesan cheese, shredded
- 2 tablespoon truffle butter, divided
- 2 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
- 2 tablespoon parmesan cheese, grated
- 1 lemon, zest of
- kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Bring cold salted water to a boil for the pasta. While it's coming to temperature, melt the butter in your large sauté pan over medium heat. Once the butter is melted, add the sliced mushrooms into the pan along with about half of the truffle spread. Sprinkle with about ½ teaspoon salt, stir occasionally and let the mushrooms cook through for 6-7 minutes.3 tablespoon butter, 8 ounces cremini mushrooms, 3 tablespoon truffle spread
- At the seven minute mark, add the minced garlic and fresh thyme to the hot pan of sliced mushrooms and stir so the garlic doesn't burn. Cook for a minute, until the garlic becomes very fragrant. (If the water is boiling now, add your dried pasta in!)2 garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, 4 ounces fettuccine pasta
- Pour the heavy cream into your pan of mushrooms and add the other half of truffle spread. Stir together well and let simmer on medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes until the heavy cream reduces by about half. Once it's reduced, add the juice of half a lemon, give a taste and add more if more acidity is needed. Don't worry about the salt just yet, the parmesan in the next step is also salty.3 tablespoon truffle spread, ¾ cup heavy cream, 1 lemon
- Turn the heat off under the mushroom pan and stir in the parmesan cheese in three batches, stirring until each batch is smooth in the sauce.½ cup parmesan cheese
- Add the cooked pasta and the truffle butter to the sauce, using tongs to toss the pasta and coat the noodles well with the creamy mushroom sauce. Taste the dish again and add salt and pepper to taste if needed, then toss the noodles again to incorporate any added seasoning.2 tablespoon truffle butter, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
- Serve immediately with grated lemon zest, parmesan cheese, and chopped fresh parsley on top of the pasta.2 tablespoon fresh parsley, 1 lemon, 2 tablespoon parmesan cheese
Recipe Notes
Storage and Reheating
- Storing: When storing any leftover, put the sauce and leftover pasta into the fridge in an airtight container for up to 4 days.
- Reheat: Reheat on the stove top over medium-low with a hearty splash of water or broth and stir frequently for about 10 minutes or until warmed through and ready to eat.
- Freezing: Because this is a cream sauce, our yummy truffle pasta recipe does not freeze well. Fridge only!
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