15 Minute Garlic Butter Noodles

This vegetarian garlic butter noodles recipe takes just 15 minutes from start to finish and only uses a handful of simple ingredients! It’s the easiest, most flavorful weeknight dinner ever and even the pickiest of eaters in your family are going to LOVE it!

You Will Love This

• This pasta dish takes 15 minutes to prepare and has only 8 ingredients!!??!? Which makes it pretty much the easiest weeknight meal ever. Cook the pasta ahead of time, and this meal will take you just over 5 minutes from start to finish! If you’re looking for more quick and easy pasta dinners be sure to check out my Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta, Creamy Tomato and Garlic Pasta, or Creamy 15 Minute Greek Pasta.
• It’s a great meal for picky eaters! While these noodles are not quite just butter and noodles, the flavors we’ve added are subtle and downright delicious. So they should satisfy even the pickiest of eaters in your life!
• You can dress it up or dress it down! You can go plain Jane on this one and just garnish with some Parmesan and chopped parsley or you can go full-on luxurious dinner date and add some creamy burrata, sun-dried tomatoes or even olives!

Ingredients and Substitutions

• Linguine Noodles — I like using linguine because the garlic butter sauce perfectly coats both sides of this long, flat noodle. But you could also use spaghetti, fettuccini, or bucatini. Really any long noodle will work.
• Butter — Make sure it’s unsalted so you can better control the sodium in this dish. You can also ghee, organic and cold-pressed olive oil, or avocado oil, but butter is preferred because of the richness and velvety texture it adds to the sauce.
• Garlic — Along with the butter, this is what makes this dish! Six cloves may sound like a lot, but its intensity calms down while it simmers in the butter. If you really love garlic, you could even bump it up to eight cloves!
• Dry White Wine — I like pinot grigio because it’s the perfect marriage of sweet and bitter, but you can use whatever white wine you have on-hand. If you want to omit alcohol, you could just use chicken stock.
• Fresh Mozzarella — I love using fresh mozzarella pearls for this recipe because they’re perfectly bite-sized, but any fresh mozzarella will work. Just don’t use the pre-shredded stuff.

Instructions

Melt butter over medium low heat. Add garlic and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Pour in white wine along with a large pinch of salt and pepper. Stir to combine and cook for another 2 minutes.

Add cooked pasta to the pot.

Toss to coat evenly in the garlic butter. Add Parmesan and red pepper flakes. You can eat it as is at this point or garnish it up nice and fancy!

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with fresh mozzarella and arugula.

Tips

• Salt your pasta water! Before you add the pasta to the boiling water, salt it heavily so that it tastes as salty as the sea. Yes, I’m serious. That means you’re going to be adding A LOT of salt to it. Don’t worry, most of the salt gets left behind in the water when you drain the pasta. But adding the salt before you cook the pasta is really going to ensure that your pasta is as flavorful as it can be.
• Cook the pasta just until al dente and not a moment longer. I usually set the timer for one minute less than the lowest recommended cook time. So if it says “boil for 8-10 minutes” I set my timer for 7 minutes and start testing the noodles right at 7 minutes. Use a slotted spoon or tongs to remove a noodle, blow on it until it’s cool enough to eat and then taste it! You’re looking for the pasta to be tender but still have a bit of a bite.
• Use fresh garlic, Parmesan and parsley for this recipe! You can mince the garlic, grate the Parmesan and chop the parsley while your pasta is cooking so it really doesn’t add much to the prep time. However, the flavor that freshly minced garlic, freshly grated Parmesan and freshly chopped parsley are going to add to these garlic butter noodles is unparalleled. If you’re more of a “jar of minced garlic, pre-shredded Parmesan and dried chopped parsley” kind of gal, that’s totally okay in a pinch. But if you have time, work with fresh ingredients!

FAQ

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