Giada De Laurentiis' Creamy Pasta Sauce Makes This Protein-Packed Ingredient A Main Star

For the past couple of years, cottage cheese and protein-packed meals have been all the rage on social media, giving the popular boomer food a resurgence in younger generations. While cottage cheese is easy to enjoy on its own, there are so many ways you can incorporate the high-protein cottage cheese curds into foods other than just breakfast and snacks. In an Instagram post, chef Giada De Laurentiis shared a recipe for a pasta dish that incorporates cottage cheese for an easy, comforting meal.

De Laurentiis' recipe for whipped cottage cheese tomato basil pasta can be made in under 30 minutes, making it a great option for a casual weeknight dinner that still satisfies and nourishes. The recipe calls for 1 cup of cottage cheese, which contains about 25 grams of protein. Pasta does contain some natural protein, which varies depending on the type of pasta used, but cottage cheese adds a substantial amount of protein to the tomato-based sauce. Compared to other traditional dairy products used in pasta, such as ricotta (around 14 grams of protein per cup) or heavy cream (around 7 grams of protein per cup), cottage cheese is an excellent choice for added richness that still contains a protein boost.

Cottage cheese is an ultra-creamy ingredient that gives your tomato sauce a punch of protein. While you might think that adding cottage cheese to a pasta sauce would yield a strange, chunky texture, Giada De Laurentiis' recipe calls for whipping the cottage cheese, which transforms the individual curds into a uniform texture that is both smooth and velvety but also light and airy from being blended with canned tomatoes. You could also mix these ingredients in a food processor for similar results.

After the tomatoes, cottage cheese, and some salt have been broken down to a homogenous sauce, De Laurentiis adds fresh basil and olive oil toward the end, and that's the entire sauce-making process, as it doesn't require cooking. To assemble the dish, freshly boiled pasta is tossed directly with cottage cheese and tomato sauce, along with a generous amount of grated Parmesan cheese, which helps the sauce cling to the noodles. The two cheeses in this recipe also create a saltier, umami-laden bite overall.

The reason you don't need to cook this pasta sauce is that high heat can cause cottage cheese to separate, resulting in a less-than-desirable texture. However, the residual heat from your boiled pasta, along with a bit of the starchy pasta water, should warm the sauce enough for serving. If you're looking for more ways to incorporate this popular dairy item in your cooking, we've rounded up some of our favorite protein-packed recipes with cottage cheese.