This pasta recipe features a delicious green onion and pancetta tomato sauce! It’s a fast, easy and delicious pasta dish, perfect for busy weeknights!
This pasta is a re-creation of a dish I recently enjoyed at a local restaurant. Yes, I’m a serial re-creator! I was intrigued by the addition of green onion and I discovered that green onions and pasta make a perfect pairing. Who knew? I’d never considered green onion with pasta, at least not in a starring role. It was a revelation and with every bite I just knew I’d try my hand at making this dish at home.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Pasta – you can use any pasta you like, but I think a short pasta works best with this sauce. I used rigatoni, but penne or bow ties would also be nice.
Butter – Then I read a little tip online recently that suggested adding butter. Say what? Yes, butter + tomatoes = an awesome pasta dish. Uh huh. It seems that the butter works to knock back the acidic tomato taste, leaving just the richness and smoothness of the tomatoes that I was after.
Pancetta – I love pancetta and it is pretty easy to find these days. You could substitute diced bacon instead, if you like or simply omit the meat for a meatless meal.
Vodka – In this rigatoni recipe, the vodka also works to heighten the tomato flavour. In fact, that’s it’s only role really, since vodka adds little in terms of taste. The vodka itself will cook off completely (the alcohol, that is) and leave behind just a tiny bit of flavour. If you’d prefer not to use alcohol or you don’t have any one hand, just skip it.
Cream – There is only a bit of cream in this one, so I recommend the heavy cream if you have it. If not, a lighter cream will work, too.
Recipe Tips
You can adjust the amount of red pepper flakes to your taste, or skip them altogether, if you don’t want any heat.
My Three Top Tips for Delicious Pasta Dishes
My pasta dish cooking technique has evolved over the years, to include a couple of techniques that I think produce the most satisfying pasta dishes …
1. Be sure to generously salt your pasta cooking water, to bring lots of flavour to your finished dish. It’s adequately salted when it “tastes like the ocean”.
2. Rather than draining pasta in the sink, I scoop the cooked pasta right out of the boiling water with a spider strainer (or tongs, for long pasta) and put it directly into the hot sauce. Adding hot pasta to the sauce helps the pasta to absorb the flavours of the sauce more easily. It also allows for having the pasta-cooking water handy, in case you need to add some to thin your pasta sauce. Be sure to still drain the pasta well in the spoon before adding to the pasta, to avoid watering down your sauce.
3. I always cook the pasta with the sauce in a hot skillet (or saucepan) for several minutes before serving. I’ve found that the perfect pasta dish needs to come together in a hot pan first, not in the serving bowl.
Simply add the hot pasta to the hot sauce and cook, stirring, for just a couple of minutes. Take the time to taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning, as needed, as well. If you sauce thickens or tightens up during this last short cooking, add a splash of your pasta cooking water to loosen it up.
To make sure I don’t dirty another pan, I always start my sauce in a large enough skillet or pot so that it will comfortably hold my cooked pasta as well, when it is cooked and ready to be added to the pot.
Top Tip!
For tomato-heavy sauces, stirring a small pat of butter into the tomato sauce at the end of cooking tempers the acidity in the sauce and rounds out the flavours.
Get the Recipe: Pancetta and Green Onion Pasta
Ingredients
- 3 cups dried rigatoni pasta, or other short pasta such as penne
- 1/2 cup pancetta, diced (or bacon diced)
- 1 cup green onions, diced, green part only, plus more for garnish
- 1/8 teaspoon crushed red chili flakes
- 1/3 cup vodka, can omit
- 28 oz canned San Marzano tomatoes, or other good quality canned tomatoes,
- 2 Tablespoons butter
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream, 35% b.f.
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Freshly grated Parmesan and additional diced green onion, for garnish
Instructions
- Boil a large pot of water and salt generously. Add pasta and cook until al dente.
- Meanwhile, pour canned tomatoes into a bowl. Break the tomatoes up with your hand and discard any tough ends. Dice your pancetta and green onions and set aside.
- In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook pancetta until browned. Remove to a bowl. Add green onions and cook, stirring, until softened and starting to brown (there should be a bit of fat from the pancetta in the pan, but if not, add a bit of butter). Add the chili flakes and cook briefly. Add vodka and cook off until only a few Tablespoons of the vodka remains. Add the tomatoes. Reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Add the butter, sugar and salt and pepper, to taste. Add the cream and stir to combine. Reduce heat to low until pasta is ready.
- When pasta is cooked, drain and return to pot. Add sauce and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. If necessary, add some pasta cooking liquid to loosen the sauce.
- Serve with additional fresh diced green onion and Parmesan.
Notes
More Pasta Recipes to Love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
This honestly was one of the best recipes I have tried in a very long time. We all just loved it. It is a keeper for sure. Loved the green onion tops and I truly think the butter addition was just amazing. Thank you!
So glad you enjoyed it! It’s what I think of every time I have a bunch of green onions needing using :) Thanks!
Excellent, quick and easy! We enjoyed the pasta with the meat and I passed the recipe on to my daughter who omitted the meat. We both agree this recipe is a keeper.
So glad you enjoyed it, Elizabeth! I often make it without the meat, as I don’t always have pancetta on hand and I find it just as nice with or without Thanks :)
Stupid Delicious – this is the best sauce I’ve made in forever! Thanks for the awesome recipe!
Thanks so much, Alyssa! It was a revelation for me, too, how great green onion was in a pasta sauce :)
I made this for my wife and I tonight for dinner as a first plate. Made it exactly as recipie the only change I made was instead of draining the pasta I scooped it out of the pot with a large slotted spoon and right into the pan with the sauce. The presentation with the green onions as a garnish made it look wonderful.
Adding the butter is smart and exactly what you said about how the tomatoe flavour will come out better. I have made and do make many different versions of pasta sauces and have to say this one stands up well and so easy to make the whole dish was completed in less then an hour.
I would if you don’t mind cut the the cream in half as it did come more rose. I am very happy to have found and subscribed to your blog . You make me look good.
So glad you enjoyed it, Pat! This one is in regular rotation here, as it’s just so easy and tasty. And I always seem to have green onion in the fridge :) Thanks!
I love that you recreated this so I could cook and taste it myself, even so far from Ontario :) Sounds delicious! I love the science behind the butter and the vodka, the green onions and what they bring to this dish. Pasta is the best dinner!
I know. Isn’t the internet great that we can share recipes so far and wide?!
This looks great. I once had a vodka sauce with pasta in an Italian restaurant and have always wanted to try one at home – it is great to have a recipe idea. Thanks for sharing.
Vodka sauce is one of my favourites. Hope you get a chance to try it.
This does sound good…I’ll have to check out that restaurant next time in that area!
Thanks Liz. I definitely recommend Grazie. Great pasta and the pizza looked great, too!
A good pasta sauce is essential. Thanks for the timely reminder about vodka sauce.
Vodka sauce is one of my favourites, for sure. The vodka really does heighten the tomato flavour.
I love vodka sauce, such a gorgeous plate of pasta!
Thanks Laura. It was delicious!
Looks tasty!! There is a Grazie near my apartment on Yonge – the pasta with rosé sauce, pine nuts and raisins is AMAZING and has been on my list to recreate since I tried it a few months ago!
Oh that pasta sounds good, too, Jennifer. We had a hard time deciding. We each ordered a different one, so we could sample each others. I’ll try that one next time I visit (or maybe you’ll re-create and share the recipe :)