A creamy pasta with sautéed spinach, crispy bacon and ricotta. This pasta could very well be your next obsession. It’s flavor packed with a hearty ricotta sauce that might make you crave for pasta night. It’s light, satisfying and it can be thrown together in about 20 minutes. Made with only a few ingredients, this pasta fits the bill perfectly.
To make this pasta creamy, we add cream of course, but the secret is the ricotta. We add a few big spoonfuls to the pot, it blends with the cooking water and coats the pasta in a rich and velvety sauce. Just be sure to reach for whole-milk ricotta and not part-skim, which can make the sauce grainy.
This is how we do it. Not counting the seasoning, there are only five main ingredients in this dish. And they’re all important, especially the two that form the sauce. To make it, first we cook the bacon until crisp, then add garlic and onion. Next, we add spinach and stir briefly just until wilted.
If you’re not a spinach person, swap in cooked broccoli, peas or arugula. We finish off with some cream and ricotta. Toss in pasta and add a final splash of starchy pasta water that allows you to control just how thick you’d prefer the sauce to be. Serve with some extra red pepper flakes to cut through the creaminess.
Let me guide you through the recipe with this step-by-step VIDEO.
RECIPE NOTES
- the pasta shapes that best complement this sauce are small-shaped pieces, like shells, orecchiette, penne, or fusilli, these shapes hold the sauce
- it’s important to use whole milk ricotta, lower-fat versions or versions with lots of stabilizers, can result in a grainy sauce
- swap spinach for cooked broccoli, baby kale or green peas
More creamy ricotta, please!
Cooking Video
Calories Per Serving: 643 kcalSpinach and Bacon Pasta with Ricotta
Ingredients
Instructions
Notes
Nutritional information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.
I’ve tried several recipes from here and they always exceed my expectations. This one fell short. I was really excited because the ingredients are all things I love. But, It’s just kinda….meh.
So sorry you did not enjoy this dish, wish I could help. Have a great day!
This was delicious! We decided next time to add some yellow squash to the sautée, and maybe less ricotta, but add lots of fresh parm. Anyway, great recipe! Can’t wait to tinker with it to suit my family’s tastes!
Hi Jennifer! Yellow squash sounds absolutely delicious. I’m so happy you enjoyed the recipe, thank you so much for you comment!
How many people does this recipe feed?
Hi, it serves 2. Hope you love it!