Pasta with Pumpkin Cream Sauce
Pasta with Pumpkin Cream Sauce
From Every Day with Rachel Ray, via The Peppertree
After 3 years of cooking together, I can almost always predict what recipes will get John pumped up. Creole, hunks of red meat, anything with bacon – it’s sure to be a home run in his book. These are the recipes that I email him the moment I read the title. Then there’s recipes like this one. When I stumble upon something that contains pumpkin, tofu, excessive whole grains – basically anything “girly” [healthy], I stick it in my “next time John travels for work” archive. But this week I found myself with half a can of pumpkin, some leftover gnocchi, and this recipe calling my name.
Unfortunately however, John was in town this week. Dreading his sad puppy-dog eyes upon hearing the word “pumpkin” in our lunch plans, I decided to make two sauces for the leftover gnocchi. The second, a decidedly more “manly” vodka cream sauce (alcohol = manly) turned out great, but John could hardly tear his fork away from the pumpkin cream batch. According to him it wasn’t very pumpkin-y, just creamy and delicious. So if you have a self-proclaimed pumpkin-hater in your house, there might be hope after all!
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 1 onion, chopped
- salt, to taste (I used a pretty hardy pinch – maybe a teaspoon)
- pepper, to taste
- 1 15-oz can pumpkin puree (pure pumpkin, not the pie filling stuff)
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup vegetable stock (I’m sure chicken would work too, I just happened to have veggie on hand)
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan (I used the green can stuff and it was fine, grate your own if you’re feeling zealous)
- pasta of your choice, about 1 lb, cooked according to package directions
- parsley, to taste
Preparation
- Melt butter in a large saute pan over medium-low heat.
- Add onion, salt and pepper and saute, stirring often, until soft, about 6 minutes.
- Stir in pumpkin and heavy cream and bring to a boil.
- Add stock and stir until well combined.
- Add Parmesan cheese. Stir to combine, until cheese melts.
- Stir in cooked pasta. Don’t put a whole pound in at once. Just add the amount that looks right to you. We used gnocchi, which is really heavy, so we had a very high sauce:pasta ratio. You may want more or less pasta, depending on your taste.
- Serve topped with parsley.
Serves about 4.

Any recipe with heavy cream is a winner in my book. Yum