12 Simple Ingredients To Give Your Pasta A Taste Of Fall

There's something especially comforting about warm pasta when autumn winds arrive, sending colorful leaves skipping outside kitchen windows. While pasta itself is a year-round pleasure, fall brings a whole new group of ingredients into play, transforming familiar spaghetti, ravioli, or penne dinners into seasonal wonder-plates. 

Pumpkin and winter squash are the most obvious additions this time of year, but they're only the beginning. The fall harvest also includes hearty vegetables such as sweet potatoes and cauliflower, along with leafy greens, woodsy mushrooms, and a bounty of robust, aromatic herbs — all waiting to infuse your favorite pasta dishes (or create entirely new ones). 

The beauty of these seasonal ingredients is that you don't need complicated recipes to release their magic. Some can simply be roasted and tossed with cooked pasta, while others thrive when blended into creamy sauces, tucked inside ravioli, or even worked directly into homemade pasta dough. Herbs and nuts add a dash of fall flavor with little, if any, extra preparation. 

Whether rich and cozy is pulling your heartstrings, or you just need a quick bowl of autumn pasta after a long day, these 12 ingredients have you covered. Mix and match them, add your favorite cheese or protein, or let one glorious seasonal twist take center stage.

First up is the most prominent symbol of autumn: pumpkin. But it's certainly not limited to pies, lattes, and baked goods. Pumpkin's mild sweetness and creamy texture make it remarkably easy to work into savory pasta dishes as well. Stir pumpkin puree into a creamy or cheesy sauce, use it as a ravioli filling, or add some to homemade pasta dough. Sage, Parmesan, browned butter, and black pepper all make natural partners.

Sweet potatoes bring both color and subtle earthy sweetness to pasta dishes. Roast bite-sized pieces until caramelized around the edges, then combine them with short pasta shapes, greens, parmesan, and a simple butter or olive oil sauce. Mashed sweet potato can also become part of a creamy pasta sauce, gnocchi, or a filling for stuffed pasta. For a special touch of autumn, stir in a touch of browned butter and sage.

Butternut squash brings an aura of autumn like few other ingredients, especially in warm pasta dishes. It's harvested when the skin develops a tan color and tough exterior, just in time for cubing and roasting until browned and tender, then tossing with pasta, olive oil, herbs, and cheese. You can also puree cooked squash into a silky sauce, or follow this Tasting Table recipe for sausage and butternut squash pasta with fusilli noodles. 

Shifting to fall-infused pasta is easy with a bold, earthy herb like sage. Draw out its distinct savory flavor by quickly pan-frying fresh sage leaves in butter until slightly crisp, then spooning over ravioli or other filled pastas. You can also bring heady fragrance to creamy sauces with a simple toss-in of finely chopped sage. Just remember that a little goes a long way with this stout, scrubby little herb. 

Mushrooms bring rich, savory, woodsy character to otherwise basic bowls of pasta, making them perfectly suited to chilly evenings. Saute sliced mushrooms until well-browned, then combine with your favorite pasta and garlic, butter, or olive oil. Add some cream for a richer experience, or cherry tomatoes to brighten the palate. Try mixing several mushroom varieties for even more texture and flavor; ones that thrive in pasta preparations include shiitake, cremini, chanterelles, and portobellos. 

Aromatic rosemary is another easy way to bring cooler-weather flavor to pasta, especially when letting it play a subtle supportive role. Add finely chopped fresh rosemary to saucy medleys of mushrooms, autumn squashes, or roasted root veggies. Or for lighter fare, simply infuse olive oil or butter with a sprig of rosemary before tossing with tube pasta and tomatoes. The strong flavor means you generally won't need much to make an impact. 

As a hearty superfood, kale leaves are intrinsically linked to high nutrition — a perfect way to stay healthy through changing seasons. It's also one of the most versatile ingredients for pasta dishes. You can simply chop the leaves and saute with garlic and olive oil, then stir straight into warm cooked pasta. Better yet, make homemade pesto from finely chopped kale for cold corkscrew pasta, or create our kale lasagna recipe with mushrooms.

Rather than serving Brussels sprouts intact as a side, give them a new personality when nestled inside pasta dishes. Consider halving, thinly slicing, or even shredding, then sauteing or roasting them before folding into creamy capellini or vermicelli. Take things in rich, smokey territory with bacon or  pancetta, with a squeeze of lemon juice for a zesty finish. Or bake into a pasta casserole with mellow white cheese and black pepper.

While cauliflower doesn't epitomize autumn as strongly as pumpkin, it's still routinely harvested from August through December. You'll find it super tasty when roasting small florets until the edges brown, then stirring into pasta with herbs, oil, and toasted breadcrumbs. Try it in a baked pasta dish with creamy béchamel, or blend into a thick cauliflower sauce for stuffing into tubed pasta or homemade tortellinis, along with finely chopped veggies or sausage.

Chestnuts bring the nostalgia of roasting fires and holiday tunes, but they deserve your attention more than once a year. The sweet, earthy flavor works beautifully in the fall, giving otherwise basic pasta a wispy, cool-weather cloak. When cooked and peeled, you can chop and toss chestnuts with mushrooms, sage, and browned butter, or puree them into a sauce or stuffed-pasta filling. Balance the natural sweetness of chestnuts by adding a hard, salty cheese like Romano. 

Leeks offer a milder alternative to onions, and they really shine in creamy fall pasta dishes. Slice them as thin as possible, and slowly sauté in butter or olive oil until softened. Then create an autumn pasta palette of flavors and  textures using ingredients such as mushrooms, basil, pancetta, cheese, cream, Italian sausage, fresh tomatoes, or roasted vegetables. Or go full-on leek-centric with just pasta and Parmesan, plus a sprinkling of toasted nuts. 

With just a handful of walnuts, you can personify autumn on a heaping plate of pasta. Toast them first to deepen the flavor, then chop over pasta with browned butter, sage, roasted squash, or leafy greens. Alternatively, highlight walnut characteristics even more by using this Tasting Table recipe for traditional Ligurian pasta with walnut cream sauce. It involves a blender, milk-soaked bread, heavy cream, roasted walnuts, a luscious dose of parmesan, and more.