Miso mushroom pasta for two, ready in 30 minutes

Miso mushroom pasta keeps turning up on Bon Appétit’s most-saved list, and it’s easy to see why. Two ingredients that taste deeply savoury meet a bit of butter, and the starchy pasta water pulls it all into a sauce that coats every strand.

It suits a small kitchen: one pot, one wide pan, a chopping board. A 400g tub of closed cup mushrooms starts from £1.29 at Tesco (price listed on Trolley.co.uk, in pounds), and you’ll only use most of it. The tub of miso is the one slightly bigger purchase, and it sticks around for plenty of other dinners.

Prep: 10 minutes. Cook: 20 minutes. Serves: 2 generously.

Allergen note: contains wheat (gluten) from the pasta, milk from the butter and cheese, and soy from the miso. Some miso is made with barley, so check the label if you avoid gluten. Check your pasta label for egg too. There are no nuts in the recipe.

Ingredients

200g dried spaghetti
300g closed cup or chestnut mushrooms, sliced about 5mm thick
15ml olive or vegetable oil
40g butter, divided
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 spring onions, sliced, whites and greens kept apart
30g white miso paste
25g parmesan or pecorino, finely grated
Black pepper and a pinch of salt (plus salt for the pasta water)
To finish, if you like: a lemon wedge

Method

Fill a large pot with water, salt it generously and bring it to the boil. Cook the spaghetti for one minute less than the packet says, because it will finish cooking in the sauce. Before draining, scoop out about 250ml of the cooking water.
While the water heats, wipe the mushrooms with a damp piece of kitchen paper and slice them. Chop the garlic and spring onions.
Heat the oil in your widest pan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms in a single layer, with a little space between them; use two batches if your pan is small, because crowded mushrooms steam instead of browning. Leave them alone for 3 to 5 minutes until the undersides are golden, then stir and cook for 3 to 5 minutes more.
Season with pepper and the pinch of salt only now. Salt draws moisture out of mushrooms, and salting early keeps them pale and soggy.
Turn the heat down to medium-low. Add 20g of the butter, the garlic and the spring onion whites, and stir for about a minute until it smells fragrant.
In a mug, whisk the miso into 150ml of the hot pasta water until smooth. Pour it into the pan with the remaining 20g butter and let it bubble gently for a minute or two. Keep it at a simmer rather than a hard boil, since Ottolenghi’s team warns that boiling miso dulls its flavour.
Add the drained spaghetti and toss over low heat for a minute. If the sauce looks tight, add pasta water a tablespoon at a time until it turns glossy and clings to the noodles.
Stir in half the cheese. Divide between two bowls and finish with the spring onion greens, the rest of the cheese, more pepper and a squeeze of lemon.

Why the method works

Browning is where the flavour starts. Marion’s Kitchen uses the same idea in her miso mushroom spaghetti: let the mushrooms sit for a couple of minutes before tossing, so they colour instead of stewing.

Pulling the pasta a minute early is worth the small effort. Food Network Kitchen’s version leans on a generous amount of pasta water to bind the sauce, and the starch in it gives you creaminess without any cream.

Swaps and tips

If you don’t have	Use instead	What to expect
White miso	Red miso, about half the amount (15g)	Saltier and stronger; one recipe pairs 3 tablespoons of white with just 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of red, so start small and taste
Closed cup mushrooms	Shiitake, oyster, or a mix	Chewier, more varied texture; shiitake costs more
Spaghetti	Linguine, penne, or gluten-free pasta	Any shape works; cook to the packet time minus a minute
Parmesan	Pecorino or another hard cheese	Sharper and saltier, so go lightly with salt
Spring onions	Shallot or chives	A shallot goes into the pan with the garlic; chives go on at the end

Vegetarian and vegan

The dish is vegetarian as written, though if you’re strict about it, check that your hard cheese is labelled vegetarian. For a vegan bowl, use plant-based butter, skip the cheese and choose egg-free pasta; as Ottolenghi’s linguine write-up notes, check the seasonings too. A scatter of toasted sesame seeds brings back some of the savoury crunch the cheese would have added.

Make it a bigger meal

Wilt a couple of handfuls of spinach into the sauce just before the pasta goes in, or serve a crunchy cabbage salad alongside. Frozen peas, tipped into the pasta water for the last two minutes, add sweetness for almost no extra cost.

Leftovers

Cool what’s left within two hours, split it into a shallow tub, and keep it in the fridge. The NHS advice is to use chilled food within 2 days and reheat it only once, until it’s steaming hot all the way through. A splash of water in the pan loosens the sauce again.

The rest of the miso has a few easy jobs. Beat a spoonful into soft butter and spread it on toast, or dissolve some in hot water with spring onions for a quick soup. Keep the tub sealed in the fridge: one guide puts opened white miso at peak quality for 3 to 6 months, so there’s no rush.