Healthy Pasta Recipe with Low-Cal Cream Sauce

This healthy pasta recipe doesn’t really taste all that healthy to me because it’s just so rich and buttery and creamy and, hello! It’s PASTA! If you’re trying to lose weight, I wouldn’t eat pasta every day. But as long as your diet is comprised of whole, natural foods, you shouldn’t have a hard time maintaining your weight, and can still lose weight with a pasta dish like this once every week or two. This recipe takes 20-minutes from start to finish.

I modified this healthy pasta recipe from an original Jillian Michaels recipe. The dressing was a bit tart for our liking, and it didn’t have near enough vegetable to pasta ratio for my conscious.

Serves 8
273 Calories
8g Fat
36g Carbs
12g Protein
8g Fiber

Ingredients

1 cup plain yogurt or Greek yogurt
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
zest from 1-2 lemons (try 2 the first time!)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt or Himalayan salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
16 oz whole wheat angel hair pasta (or any other whole grain angel hair like barley, spelt, etc.)
2 Tbsp olive oil
5-6 medium zucchini
3 garlic cloves
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes

Directions

Set a large pot of water on high heat to boil. Meanwhile, in a small sauce pan, stir together yogurt, parmesan, lemon zest, salt and pepper. Set pan over the lowest heat to warm up while you continue prepping.

Add noodles to boiling water and cook according to package directions for al dente pasta (al dente means almost done. This recipe doesn’t like mushy noodles).

Pasta is cooking, now you have about 9 minutes to do the rest. Totally doable! Add olive oil to a large skillet on medium high heat. Slice zucchini into thin strips (about 1/3 inch wide) and then gather all the strips in a stack and slice them in half lengthwise. Add zucchini to the skillet. Add the garlic as well.

Stir your sauce and take it off the heat. Check your pasta, make sure it’s not done already. It’s probably been going about 5 minutes now, so you’ve got about 4 more minutes until it’s al dente! Slice each tomato in half. Check the zucchini. If it’s just starting to tenderize, add the tomatoes and stir it all around in the pan until the tomato skins just start to wilt or shrivel (about 1 minute)

Remove skillet from heat, drain the pasta, and add it to a large serving bowl. Add the veggies from the skillet to the past, and then pour the sauce over the pasta and veggies and stir to combine. Serve!

IMPORTANT: I have been told by a couple of people that if you add the sauce to the skillet rather than adding it to the bowl after everything has been taken off the heat, that the sauce will curdle. This didn’t happen to me in the past, but different ovens have slightly different temperatures, and it could just be a few degrees that makes the difference between not curdling and curdling. So follow the above order to for sure avoid curdling!

I hope your family enjoys this healthy pasta recipe as much as mine does!

12 Comments

Lindsay on March 28, 2012 at 9:39 pm

It totally curdled when I added the yogurt sauce to the vegetables. Ugh! I was doing it right!

McKenna Gordon on April 2, 2012 at 11:46 am

Hi Lindsay! This will happen if the pan is too hot. I will change the instructions above to remove the skillet from the heat FIRST and then stir in the sauce and that will prevent it. Different stoves are going to heat slightly differently, and mine doesn’t curdle. So sorry! I hope it still tasted good? Try it again and you won’t be disappointed! This is a favorite among my readers!

angela on April 1, 2012 at 6:03 pm

I made this today…Mine curdled, too. I tried adding water from the pasta and that didn’t really help. Any tips? It tastes really good, but I can’t get past the texture :/

McKenna Gordon on April 2, 2012 at 11:47 am

Hi Angela, see my comment to Lindsay above.

Ray on April 1, 2012 at 9:30 pm

I really want to try this, like right away, but I am curious about the curdling. That doesn’t sound encouraging. Is it just a matter of letting the pasta cool to the warmth of the yogurt mixture?

McKenna Gordon on April 2, 2012 at 11:48 am

Hi Ray! See the comments above and also, I have just edited the recipe to be a little more clear on how to avoid this. I just transferred this recipe to this site from my other (old) site and unfortunately, all the comments didn’t get transferred with the post. This recipe is a favorite among my readers. Many people have commented or emailed that it has become a weekly favorite at their house. I would try it for sure, I think you’ll love it. But be careful of the heat and see my red note in the recipe above 🙂

AG on April 2, 2012 at 11:42 am

This sounds so good! Can you list calorie information for your recipes? That would be so helpful in determining portion sizes. Also, what is your favorite whole wheat pasta? I sometimes make my own from scratch, and it is heaven, but the store-bought stuff is like cardboard. At least the stuff I’ve tried.