Why it’s so good!
This sage butter pasta with mushrooms might be made with very simple ingredients, but the flavour is outstanding. The brown butter sage sauce is so quick to make and great on everything from pasta to potatoes and so much more, but here we’ll focus on combining it with pasta and mushrooms.
Perfectly al dente pasta is laced with a butter sauce that’s infused with the flavours of sage and garlic. Golden, sauteed mushrooms and creamy, toasted pine nuts are stirred through for one decadent and comforting bowl of pasta, ready in 20 minutes or less! Every bowl will be licked clean.
If you love pesto, try this easy chicken pesto pasta too.
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Ingredients you’ll need
Simple, everyday ingredients shine in this easy pasta dinner. Brown butter sage pasta, while easy to make and with limited ingredients, is so much more than the flavour of butter and sage. Garlic, mushrooms and pine nuts all add their own wonderful nuances here to bring you a dish of comfort.
Jump to the recipe for full ingredients and instructions.
- Dried pasta: Many dried pasta shapes will work here. I use a smaller style rigatoni pasta here but penne pasta, pasta shells, fusilli or even linguine or spaghetti will all work well.
- Mushrooms: Swiss brown mushrooms are known by so many names worldwide. A portabello mushroom that is harvested early, you might know them as cremini mushrooms, baby bella mushrooms or chestnut mushrooms.
- Butter: I use unsalted butter here and then add salt to taste on serving. Some brands of salted butter can be very salty, and too salty when combined with the pasta that’s been cooked in salted water. If you have one you know you love then go for it but you will be able to control it better using unsalted.
- Fresh garlic: I use one large fresh clove of garlic. You can add more or less to your taste but keep in mind that too much will overwhelm the sage in the sauce.
- Sage: You must use fresh sage for this. Not only does it give an amazing flavour, but the leaves crisp up in the butter, adding a lovely texture to the butter and sage pasta.
- Pine nuts: While the pine nuts are optional, they’re fantastic if you love textural dishes and they have a lovely creamy, nutty flavour.
- Parmesan: Serve up finely grated parmesan cheese for everyone to add their own to the dish. Please use parmesan cheese from a block and grate it yourself – I use a microplane. Its flavour is worlds above both pre-shredded and the shelf-stable variety. Not only that, but it doesn’t have the preservatives in it that the shelf-stable one has and in block form, it’s often cheaper too!
How to make it
Pasta with mushrooms in a sage butter sauce – it’s so easy to make and truly delicious. Browning the butter transforms and elevates it from just buttery yum to nutty, rich and even more tasty. Here’s the simple steps to making it and combining with pasta and mushrooms.
Jump to the recipe for full ingredients and instructions.
1. The pine nuts and mushrooms
The first thing you want to do is get some water on the boil for your pasta and add the pasta along with a tablespoon of salt once it’s boiling.
Meanwhile, you’ll start on the sauce. The pine nuts are first; just toast them in a dry pan over medium heat, tossing often until you see them turning golden and set them aside. Next, add the mushrooms to some heated oil in the pan and cook until any liquid has evaporated and they start turning golden.
2. Start the sage butter pasta sauce
Once you’ve set aside the mushrooms, melt your butter in the same pan over medium-high heat and let it start to bubble. Once it does, add the garlic and sage.
3. Cook until turning brown
The real beauty of a butter sauce is not only it’s simplicity but how the flavour changes to a nutty butter flavour once it browns. When you see it turning amber, it’s time to take it off the heat. It will continue to cook so you need to move quickly at this stage.
4. Remove the sage
It’s optional, but I like to remove the sage at this point as once you add everything and mix it all together, they’ll be crumbled up. I just use a Chinese steamboat wire net for this but a slotted spoon will work fine.
5. Combine and serve
Now you can combine your brown butter sage pasta. Add your drained pasta, mushrooms and pine nuts and give it a really good mix. Now add back the sage leaves and gently mix those in. Taste it and add salt to taste. Serve this dish immediately with parmesan on the table for everyone to add at will.
Tips and tricks
- Don’t forget to salt your pasta water. Fill a large pot about ½-⅔ full of water and add 1 tablespoon of salt.
- Don’t let the butter burn: Once you see the butter turn amber, take it off the heat. It will continue to cook in the hot pan, while you go about adding the other ingredients.
- Use a light coloured pan: It makes it easier to see the colour of the butter.
- Transfer to warm plates: Warm a plate for 60 seconds in the microwave or a pan in the oven, then use that to transfer your mushrooms to once cooked so they stay warm while you cook the butter sage sauce.
- Use unsalted butter: Aside from being able to control the saltiness of your dish better, there’s a more scientific reason to stick to unsalted butter here. Salted butter tends to have a higher water content than unsalted butter and that water evaporates as the butter cooks so by the end, you’ll have less sauce if you use salted butter than if you use unsalted butter.
- If your sauce is ready before your pasta, decant it into a cool bowl so that it stops cooking
⏰ Time saving tips
Meal prepping is popular these days, for good reason. We all have busy lives and sometimes even doing small things on a suitable day can save you time later that week. This sage and butter pasta is already a quick dish but here’s a few tips to help you out even more.
- Boil the kettle: If you boil a full kettle of water then pour it into your large saucepan, this will get you well on the way to pasta water ready to go in a shorter time.
- Wash and slice the mushrooms up to a few days ahead.
- Make the sauce 2-3 days ahead: You can make your sage and garlic butter sauce right up to the point of adding the remaining ingredients ahead of time, then store it in an airtight container in the fridge. It will return to a solid state, so just heat it again to melt, but you won’t need to cook it any further. This is also a great idea if you just want to be able to serve 1 or 2 dishes at a time – you only need to heat enough of the sauce as you need.
- Pre-toast the pine nuts: Taking all of 5 minutes to do, toast the pine nuts ahead of time and store them in the pantry in an airtight container. They’ll keep for a few months and you can have them ready to go.
Variations
This brown butter sage sauce goes so well with just about anything. Chicken, pork and fish all work great as protein pairings. In the veg world, roasted veggies love this. You could roast up red bell pepper, cubes of butternut squash or brussels sprouts and add those right into this pasta too. And as for pasta, it’s lovely over gnocchi or filled pastas like ravioli or tortellini.
The sage butter pasta sauce goes beautifully with nuts, playing off the nuttiness of the butter. I use pine nuts here but you could swap them for hazelnuts or almonds. Toast them first for the best flavour. Walnuts work great in sage pasta too.
Sage is an absolute classic in a brown butter sauce but other herbs do work. Thyme is particularly good, and finely chopped rosemary would be great, too. Both would be best in smaller quantities than the sage called for in the recipe.
Make it creamy by adding a little drizzle of cream to the sauce or mix a good amount of parmesan and some of the pasta water into the sauce towards the end. Or, give some zing by adding a squeeze of lemon juice.
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Ingredients
- 300 g dried pasta (like rigatoni)
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 200 g swiss brown mushrooms (cremini, baby bella, chestnut) thinly sliced
- 155 g unsalted butter (5½oz)
- 1 large clove garlic minced
- ¼ cup fresh sage leaves packed
- 1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts optional
- parmesan finely grated to serve
For best results, always weigh ingredients where a weight is provided
Instructions
- Cook the pasta in a pot of salted boiling water according to packet instructions until al dente.
- Drain the pasta, keeping ¼ a cup of pasta water in case you want to add it to your sauce. Just a little can make the sauce go further and even make it a little creamier.
- Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a dry deep, light coloured medium saucepan over medium-high heat, tossing often until golden. Set aside.
- Add the oil to the pan, still over medium-high heat and add the mushrooms, cook until the liquid all evaporates and they start turning golden brown. Set aside with the pine nuts on a warm plate.
- Reduce the heat to medium and melt the butter in the same saucepan. Let it begin to bubble.
- Add the garlic and sage leaves and continue cooking, swirling the pan often, as the butter foams and eventually turns amber in colour. Keep swirling the pan so you can see the colour of the butter and so it cooks evenly – you want to see an amber colour with brown flecks (not black).
- Working quickly, remove from heat and scoop out some of the sage leaves to add back at the end.
- Immediately add the drained pasta, pine nuts and mushrooms to the browned butter sauce and toss well to coat. If you like, you can add in a little of that reserved pasta water at this point too to get the consistency you like.
- Add the sage leaves back and gently stir them through.
- Taste and add salt and black pepper to taste. Transfer to serving dishes and serve with finely grated parmesan to taste.
- Please take a moment to leave a comment & rating. It's appreciated and so helpful.
Notes
- Tablespoons: I use a standard Australian 20ml tablespoon (equal to 4 teaspoons). Check yours before measuring.
- Unsalted butter is best: Different brands of salted butter will have different quantities of salt and it can make your whole dish too salty. It’s better to season to taste at the end. Also, salted butter contains more water than unsalted which will evaporate leaving you with less sauce at the end.
- Nutrition details are approximate only – scroll below the recipe to find the full nutritional information.
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2 Comments on “Sage Butter Pasta”
Very tasty and simple to prepare – I added some chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice
So happy you love it, Ted.