White Sauce Mushroom Pasta with Vegetables

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Cooking With Anadi

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White Sauce Mushroom Pasta with Vegetables

When you think of mushrooms what adjective comes to your mind? For me it’s delicious creaminess!

Oh my, I’m on a roll here with the mushroom recipes! I hope you’re enjoying them! We have Cheesy Sautéed Mushrooms on Toast, Creamy Breakfast Mushroom Omelette, and now this White Sauce Mushroom Pasta with Vegetables! By the way, up next I’ve actually got Mushroom Matar, an Indian mushrooms and peas curry! So you won’t want to miss that! Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter so you don’t miss this recipe and more exciting recipes to come! Partly the case for there being so many mushrooms is that I’m always left with extras, so I just need to keep making more mushroom dishes! It’s a vicious cycle, kind of like what’s going on with beef broth when I make poutine! At the time of writing this, yes, that’s still in the works too! But I hope it will be well worth the wait and all the experimentation!

With that being said, yes, mushrooms add so much creaminess to any dish! I just love some nice sautéed mushrooms with onions and cheese! Mushrooms are awesome in vegetarian dishes because I find that they add so much body! Now add the fragrance of garlic and YUM! I can’t resist the wonderful aroma and flavor!

Let me tell you a little bit of history behind this white sauce mushroom pasta. This is the first white sauce pasta I’ve ever had at home. My family didn’t eat much pasta at home because it was seen as “fast food” or very fancy from Italian restaurants. I think this was actually the only pasta dish my mom ever made. This was also the first white sauce pasta dish I made when I moved to Canada, and it was a go-to for me when I needed a quick dinner. Actually, I don’t think until over a year after settling in Canada I actually made other pasta dishes - yep, this was the one!

This pasta with mushrooms recipe uses minimal ingredients. We’re infusing a classic béchamel sauce with our sautéed mushrooms and veggies. Yes, this white sauce mushroom pasta actually has NO CREAM! Our béchamel sauce is nice and creamy as it is, but to get this pasta ultra creamy, what we’ll be doing is adding in some mozzarella cheese! And that’s all you need for a wonderfully exquisite dinner!

All you need is 20 minutes! So let’s get to it!

Tools Needed

• Nonstick pan
• Whisk
• Wooden spoon
• Cutting board
• Chef's knife
• Measuring cups
• Colander
• Large bowl

Ingredients for White Sauce Mushroom Pasta

We’ll be making our sauce before the pasta. Check out How to Make Amazing Béchamel Sauce if you want more details on this classic sauce! It’s so versatile and can be used in other white sauce dishes such as the Ultimate Creamy Mac and Cheese, and other mac and cheese varieties such as Ultimate Butter Chicken Mac and Cheese or Creamy Lobster Mac and Cheese with Chili Garlic Butter!

For the Béchamel Sauce

• Butter. Used to sauté the flour.
• All purpose flour. With butter and cold milk, they create the roux.
• Cold milk. Cold milk is crucial to get a perfectly smooth sauce! Cold milk will help ensure that there are no lumps in your sauce.
• Ground nutmeg. Optional, but adds a wonderful nuttiness to our sauce. A little bit of freshly ground nutmeg goes a long way! For me it’s an essential ingredient!
• Salt and pepper. To taste.

For the Pasta

• Oil or butter. Used to sauté our veggies.
• Mushrooms. You can use your favorite mushroom! Here I’m using white button mushrooms because that’s what I had on hand. I’ve also used cremini or brown mushrooms and those work well too! Use whatever, the results will be similar. Go experiment what works best for you!
• Carrots. Cut into strips.
• Garlic. Finely chopped. This will add lots of flavor to our veggies and mushrooms.
• Onions. Thinly sliced. I like these strips of onions because they add tremendous flavor and that seeps into the awesome white sauce!
• Mozzarella. Used to thicken the sauce and make it nice and gooey!
• Parmesan. For garnish.
• Pasta shape. I’m using penne rigate here because that’s just what I’ve always used. Personally, I can’t imagine this dish with another pasta shape! BUT if you don’t have penne rigate on hand, the penne lisce will work just fine, or you can use rigatoni or ziti. I would recommend any large tube-shaped pasta so you get all that nice creamy sauce and the veggies meld together into your pasta!

How to Make White Sauce Mushroom Pasta with Vegetables

For the Béchamel Sauce

1. Heat a pan on medium heat and add butter. Once the butter melts, mix in the flour and whisk for 2-3 mins until the rawness of the flour is cooked out. The roux will begin to smell nutty, which is a good indicator
2. Pour in your milk, little bit at a time while whisking to work out any lumps. Once all your milk is mixed in, wait until your sauce starts to come up to a simmer.
3. As soon as the sauce comes to a simmer, it will begin to thicken. Once the béchamel is thick enough to evenly coat the back of a spoon, season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

For the Pasta

1. Bring water up to a boil and season with salt once boiling. Add pasta and cook until al dente.
2. Reserve about 1/2 cup of pasta water to adjust consistency of sauce as required.
3. In the meanwhile, heat up a pan on medium heat and add butter/olive oil.
4. Once the oil is hot, add onions and carrots with a pinch of salt and sauté until the veggies start to soften.
5. Add mushrooms, mix well and cook until mushrooms have lost most of their water content, reduced by about half in volume.
6. Season to taste and add salt and pepper as needed. Set veggies mixture aside and heat up the béchamel sauce.
7. Add pasta and veggies to the sauce and mix well. Simmer for 1-2 minutes and add the mozzarella.
8. Turn off the heat and mix well. Serve hot with parmesan cheese, fresh pepper and a side of garlic bread.

Tips for Making an Excellent White Sauce Mushroom Pasta

• When making the béchamel sauce, use COLD milk to ensure you have a smooth sauce
• Cook the carrots with the onions so that your carrots soften up. In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than having crunchy hard carrots in a hot dish!
• To adjust the consistency of the pasta sauce, use the reserved pasta water for additional flavor
• If you’re using mozzarella cheese, turn off the heat after adding the cheese so that the mixture stays gooey and you get nice cheesy pulls!

Serving Suggestions

This pasta is quite incredible on its own, but if you want to enjoy this dish with a side then by all means go for it! For a lighter side, you may like a simple salad of arugula and cherry tomatoes.

However, if you want this meal to feel like a feast, then go have some garlic bread! I quickly whipped up some garlic bread by heating a small piece of Portuguese bun onto my tawa with butter, minced garlic, and a dash of oregano. Of course add some cheese on top if you want cheesy garlic bread! That took two minutes and was delicious! I like having garlic bread with my pasta to scoop up all the yummy leftover sauce when the pasta is finished!

White Sauce Pasta vs Alfredo: What Is the Difference?

This is a white sauce pasta recipe built on bechamel, not on cream, and the difference is worth knowing because the two names get used interchangeably online. An alfredo sauce is butter and parmesan emulsified with pasta water, and the North American version almost always adds heavy cream on top of that. Bechamel is a roux instead: 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter cooked with 1 1/2 tablespoons of all purpose flour until it smells nutty, then 1 1/2 cup milk whisked in cold, a little at a time, until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. No heavy cream anywhere in it. The result is lighter than alfredo but every bit as silky, and it carries vegetables far better, because the flour gives the sauce structure to hold them. The 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg is optional and does more for the flavour than it has any right to.

Cooking the Pasta and Getting the Texture Right

Cook pasta in plenty of well-salted water — 8 to 10 cups of water for the 8 oz of penne here, which is about 225 grams if your box is metric — and salt it only once it comes to the boil. Before you drain, reserve about 1/2 cup pasta water; that starchy liquid is what loosens the sauce if it tightens, and it does more for the final texture than extra milk would. Get the vegetables going in a hot pan while the pasta cooks: onions and carrots first with a pinch of salt, then the mushrooms, and stir until they have given up their water and shrunk by roughly half. That step matters more than it looks — mushrooms added while still wet will thin the bechamel straight back out. Add the pasta and vegetables to the sauce, simmer for a minute or two, then stir the mozzarella in off the heat so it stays stretchy instead of splitting.

Easy Swaps, Add-Ins and Leftovers

A few expert tips for making this one your own. Fusilli works if you have no penne — the spirals hold a thick white sauce as well as the ridges do. No fresh garlic in the house? Half a teaspoon of garlic powder stirred into the sauce covers it, though the 2 fresh cloves are better. For more vegetables, broccoli florets and sweet corn both suit this sauce: add broccoli alongside the carrots so it has time to soften, and corn right at the end. For protein, shrimp is the easiest addition — cook it separately for a couple of minutes a side and fold it through at the end so it does not overcook. As written the dish is mild and creamy, which makes it a safe bet with kids; if you want heat, put red chilli flakes on the table and let everyone choose. Leftovers keep in an airtight container in the fridge for two to three days, and the bechamel sets firm once cold, so reheat gently with a splash of milk and stir until it loosens back into a sauce.

Frequently Asked Questions