This creamy vegan pesto pasta sauce is incredibly quick, easy, and delicious! You can whip this sauce up in less time than it takes the pasta to cook. You'll have a rich and creamy gourmet-tasting dinner on the table in less than 20 minutes! The fresh taste of basil and garlic in this creamy sauce will have your family licking their plates!
Jump to:
❤️ You'll love this recipe because it's
- a dairy-free, gluten-free, and nut-free dish that nearly anyone can enjoy.
- quick and easy to make in less time than it takes to boil your pasta!
- rich, creamy, and satisfying!
- simply delicious.
🧾 Ingredients and substitutions
- Pasta - any type of pasta works well. See my list of vegan pasta brands if you are not sure what to buy. You can also use a gluten-free pasta of choice. (I used gluten-free Tinkyada fettuccini for the pasta in the pictures).
- Plant-Based Milk - for the creamy base of the pasta sauce. You can use any plain-flavored soy, rice, cashew, or hemp milk. If you want a richer creamier sauce, you can also use a 13.5 oz can of coconut milk plus 1/2 cup of water.
- Salt and Pepper - for flavor.
- Tapioca Starch - to thicken the sauce. It gives it a thick stretchy texture that doesn't get gloppy when it starts to cool. You can also use cornstarch or potato starch, but they tend to make the sauce harden on the pasta once it cools down a little.
- Nutritional Yeast - for a rich cheesy flavor. (optional) Aka Nooch is a cheesy-tasting yellow powder sold in most health food stores and big grocery stores.
- Pesto - any vegan pesto will work. Sometimes you can find vegan pesto at the store, but it's also super easy to make your own vegan pesto in a blender or food processor with some fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and salt.
🥄 How to make creamy pesto sauce
Step 1 - Make some vegan pesto if you don't have any pre-made.
Step 2 - Boil water and cook pasta according to package instructions in a large pot.
Step 3 - While the pasta is cooking, measure out all the sauce ingredients into a medium-sized saucepan and whisk them together.
Step 4 - Once combined, turn the heat to medium, and cook stirring frequently until it starts to boil.
Step 5 - Allow to boil slowly for 1 minute, then remove from heat.
Step 6 - Pour over drained and rinsed pasta, mix well, and serve hot.
🥘 What to serve with pesto pasta
Serve this vegan pesto pasta with some homemade vegan focaccia bread, vegan cheddar bay biscuits, or vegan garlic knots on the side!
👩🏻🍳 Pro Tips
- Make sure to mix the starch in with the milk while it is cold so it will dissolve. (If you add starch to hot liquid it will get lumpy).
- Stir frequently while heating. The starch will settle to the bottom and get lumpy if you walk away from it.
🌟 Add-ins
Toss in some extra veggies or vegan protein for a more complete meal.
- cherry tomatoes
- toasted pine nuts
- steamed broccoli
- fried mushrooms
- vegan "chicken" strips
- fried tofu - see this recipe to show you how to make perfect crispy fried tofu every time.
- Sprinkle with vegan parmesan cheese.
🍞 Can it be made gluten-free?
The sauce is gluten-free, so all you need to do is use gluten-free pasta. You can also serve it over zoodles for a low-carb gluten-free meal.
If you like creamy pasta sauces, you'll love my silken tofu pasta sauce, alfredo sauce with coconut milk, coconut mac & cheese, or my ultimate vegan mac and cheese recipe.
❔ Where to buy vegan pesto
Vegan pesto can be a little hard to find, but I usually find vegan versions at Whole Foods. Trader Joe's also has a vegan cashew pesto in their refrigerated section by the hummus. You can also order it on Amazon.
But seriously, it is so easy to make your own vegan pesto you really don't need to purchase it!
It's actually much easier to make your own pesto at home than buy it. You just need to put some basil, olive oil, garlic, nutritional yeast, and salt into a food processor and blend them into a sauce. You can throw in some pinenuts, walnuts, or cashews for a creamy nutty flavor too.
Check out my recipe for vegan pesto with instructions on how to freeze it.
I make up a big batch and freeze it to always have on hand for meals like my Vegan Tofu Scramble with Pesto, Vegan Gnocchi with Pesto, Vegan Minestrone Soup, or my Vegan Pesto Hummus.
🍝 More vegan pasta recipes
- Vegan Broccoli Pasta
- Vegan Bolognese
- Simple Vegan Tomato Pasta
- Vegan Baked Ziti
- Vegan Stuffed Shells
- Tahini Pasta
📌 Be sure to follow me on Pinterest for new vegan recipes!
📋 Vegan pesto pasta recipe
Creamy Vegan Pesto Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 16 oz pasta
For the pesto cream sauce:
- 2 cups plant-based milk plain flavored (or 1 can coconut milk plus 1/2 cup water).
- 3 teaspoons tapioca starch or potato or corn starch
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast (optional)
- 1/4 cup vegan pesto
Instructions
- Make vegan pesto if you don't have any pre-made.
- Boil water and cook pasta according to package directions.
- While the pasta is cooking, measure out 2 cups plant-based milk, 3 tsp tapioca starch, 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast and 1/4 cup vegan pesto into a medium-sized saucepan and whisk together.
- Once combined, turn the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently until it starts to boil.
- Allow to boil slowly for 1 minute, then remove from heat.
- Pour over drained and rinsed pasta, mix well, and serve hot.
Video
Notes
- Make sure to mix the starch in with the milk while it is cold so it will dissolve. (If you add starch to hot liquid it will get lumpy).
- Stir frequently while heating. The starch will settle to the bottom and get lumpy if you walk away from it.
Nutrition
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Leave a comment and starred review! I would love to hear from you!
For some reason my sauce didn't thicken at all, even though I used the amount of tapioca written in the recipe and I even let it boil for over 5 minutes. No one else in the comments seemed to have this problem so I must've gone wrong somewhere. Even though it was quite a liquidy sauce for me, it was still delicious flavors.
I'm not sure why it wouldn't have thickened, that has never happened to me. If you used store-bought pesto, maybe it was an interaction with an ingredient in that? Glad that you liked the flavor. 🙂
Hi Monica!
My friends and I cooked this together for dinner last night and it turned out so amazing! We made a 1/2 batch of your vegan pesto recipe and put all of it in the cream sauce (probably about 1/2cup instead of 1/4cup). We used 1 can coconut milk but only added 1/4cup water instead of 1/2cup because we wanted a thicker sauce. We also added an extra 1tsp tapioca starch to make it extra thick. I also added 3/4tsp lemon juice to the sauce. We used rigatoni pasta.
We baked some halved cherry tomatoes and sliced mushrooms (tossed with a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt) in the oven for 30min at 350*F and added them to the pasta as well. We served the pasta with garlic bread on the side.
Next time I might add a little less salt to the sauce, maybe 1/2tsp instead of 1tsp. Overall I’m in love!! I’ll definitely be making this again, it’s a new favourite. Thank you so much for the amazing and simple pesto & pesto cream sauce recipes!
I'm so happy that you enjoyed the recipe, Evelyn. 🙂
Hey Monica! Love this recipe and have made it so many times! This time I have a bunch of extra sauce left, is it freezable?
I'm so happy that you liked it! Yes, you can freeze it. Enjoy! 🙂
Super quick and easy pesto pasta recipe. I’ve tried a few of different pesto recipes and this is definitely the best so far
I'm so happy that you liked it, Rebecca!
This is definitely a staple in our house! So delish!!
I'm so happy that you guys like it, Chelsea!
Very good! Love this way to flavour a creamy sauce. Have always just had straight up pasta pesto in the past, or straight up Alfredo style sauce but the pesto creamy sauce gives best of both and really improves the dish ! I think this one will become a staple in our house. Thank you! Can’t wait to try your pesto hummus next!
You're welcome! I'm so happy that you liked it, Mo! I can't get enough pesto, so if you're like me, you'll love the pesto hummus too! 🙂
Amazing!! My boyfriend and I made this tonight, along with bruschetta on the side. (YUM!) We added some Gardein 7-grain chick’n tenders and Violife parmesan on top to take it to the next level. Omg, SO GOOD!!! I felt like I was eating at a fancy restaurant! Can’t wait to make this for other people (and show them how yummy vegan food is!) 😉
The only thing we changed about this recipe was we used twice the amount of pesto than the recipe calls for. (We used store-bought vegan pesto from our local co-op.)
The milk we used was cashew milk, and it worked perfectly for the creamy texture, compared to coconut milk I’ve used in alfredo recipes. We used spaghetti pasta (I prefer it to other types of pasta when cooking, because of how the sauce coats it compared to thicker noodles like linguini).
Thank you for this delicious recipe!
You're welcome, Amara! I'm so happy that you guys liked the recipe! It sounds like a delicious meal! 🙂
I made this tonight and it was perfect! I topped it with violife vegan parmesan. So yummy. Thank you for a super quick and tasty recipe 😊
My non-vegan family loved it as well.
You're welcome! I'm glad that you all loved it! 🙂
Delicious!
Glad that you liked it! 🙂
Loved this recipe!
I'm so happy that you liked it! 🙂
Thank you! I’m looking forward to trying some of these recipes.
You're welcome! I hope that you like them! 🙂
Absurdly easy & so delicious! Husband says this was one of his favorite vegan pasta dishes yet. Served over homemade whole wheat/flax linguine, green beans, & cannellini beans. Topped with a little red pepper flake, black pepper & hemp seed “parm” . Now I know what to do with the massive amount of pesto I’ll have this season! Thank you!
You're welcome Dharma! I'm so happy that you and your husband liked it! 🙂
Made this for my work Christmas luncheon today. Everyone loved it! Thanks for a great pesto recipe! Super easy to make!
So happy that everyone loved it! 🙂
Really great recipe. I’ve tried a few vegan Alfredo sauces and this was my favorite so far. I roasted some cherry tomatoes with it and heated up some tofurky chicken. My girlfriend and I loved it. I might try more tapioca starch next time to make the sauce a little thicker but the flavor was great.
I'm so happy that you liked it! 🙂
So creamy!!! Looks amazing 🙂 I love vegan pesto, I'll have to try this sauce for sure! I really like using tapioca starch too. Awesome recipe!
This sauce is it die for!! Loved it, so much flavor.
So happy to hear that you liked it Noelle! 🙂
Yes please! Easy and no doubt delicious...sign me up!
Thanks Jules! 🙂
I love pesto but have always been intimidated to make it.
This pesto sauce was ridiculously easy to make and tastes amazing.
So happy that you liked it Rachelle! It is so crazy easy! 🙂
When it comes to the pesto, I’m a big fan of this recipe: https://www.thecuriouschickpea.com/vegan-garlic-pesto-alfredo-pasta-with-grilled-garlic-scapes/
I usually use garlic cloves since garlic scapes are hard to come by, but that pesto combined with this Alfredo sauce was incredible.
Glad that you liked it! 🙂