Reach For One Ingredient For Pasta Dishes Packed With Flavor

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Few low-prep dishes satisfy and delight on busy weeknights like one-pot pastas, and one of the best ingredients to take your pasta dishes to the next level is vegetable broth. Boiling dry pasta directly in vegetable broth instead of water imparts bolder flavor as the pasta soaks it up. Plus, you'll end up with a pot full of starchy cooking liquid from the boiled pasta, which can provide a solid base for building a pan sauce. Rather than draining the pasta water, simply cook the pasta directly in the broth and utilize what's left to craft a sauce. As a general rule, for constructing sauces from one-pot pastas like this, the golden ratio is roughly 4 ½ cups (or a 32-ounce store-bought carton) of vegetable broth per 12 ounces of dry pasta.

This one-pot pasta tip can be a thrifty way to showcase a batch of homemade veggie stock. Or, for a more convenient option, store-bought broth totally works, too — and Imagine Organic is our go-to vegetable broth brand. If you're going the store-bought route, just be sure to taste-test the pasta (or sauce) as you season, as premade broths tend to be saltier than homemade. 

Try combining veggie broth, white wine, heavy cream, black garlic, and tarragon for a luscious pan sauce. Or, for a satisfying vegan sauce, build that vegetable broth with a base of sauteed shallots and garlic, plus a kick of lemon juice, nutritional yeast, and any fresh herbs of your choice.

Alternatively, if you prefer to cook your pasta the traditional way, then vegetable broth also works wonders as an ingredient in homemade tomato sauces, counterbalancing the natural sweetness of the tomatoes while taming their acidity. Try adding a splash of it as the fifth ingredient to a simple four-ingredient pasta sauce, and cooking the sauce down over low, slow heat to evaporate any excess liquid. Pro tip: Simmering down a splash of vegetable broth is also a quick way to upgrade a jar of store-bought tomato sauce (Rao's marinara is our all-time favorite brand, here at Tasting Table). Just keep in mind that you might need to adjust the salt content of the pasta water, if adding store-bought stock into your tomato sauce. However, bear in mind Italians would always salt the water generously, regardless of what's in the sauce.

Feeling ambitious? Stir that vegetable broth with a few scoops of canned pumpkin puree, a dollop of mascarpone, a handful of rosemary, and black pepper for a creamy, dreamy pasta sauce that comes together in minutes. This pasta-cooking-liquid method is also a quick, traditional way to make Italian pastina with egg. Simply simmer the pastina in the vegetable broth until the texture becomes thick and velvety, then top it with a handful of grated Parmesan, a drizzle of good olive oil, and crack an egg into the still-boiling-hot pasta-soup for added richness. On cold-weather nights, you could also use an extra generous splash of vegetable broth to whip up a quick pasta soup, like this comforting Italian penicillin soup with pastina and chicken.