Easy Pasta Recipes to Welcome Spring

These vibrant, produce-packed meals are just the thing for celebrating warmer days.

Published March 17, 2025Updated March 17, 2025

Here’s a question to consider: If summer has its ice cream and grill smoke, fall its casseroles and roasts, winter its soups and stews, what are spring’s hallmarks? The warming weather calls for something fresh and bright, but the lingering chill still demands something with heft. Is this … pasta’s time to shine? The 24 recipes that follow make a case for its place as the season’s perfect food. Each one is fast, easy and ready to meet the moment, whether that’s a 30-degree night warmed by a cheesy baked pasta or a sunny, unseasonably warm day made finer with a light, simple green pasta salad. Because the days should be getting longer, not harder.

An overhead image of saucy spaghetti, chickpeas and greens in a skillet set underneath some tongs. A small bowl of crisped chickpeas sits off to the side.

If you have a can of chickpeas, you’re well on your way to Alexa Weibel’s pantry pasta, which uses them two ways: a garnish and to fortify the sauce. Feel free to toss in whatever greens you have on hand, and play with the spices: A little fennel seed adds sophistication, while paprika lends smokiness.

Recipe: Creamy Chickpea Pasta With Spinach and Rosemary

Two bowls of pasta topped with tail-on shrimp.

Lidey Heuck’s simple version of the classic Italian spaghetti al limone leans light and citrusy, unlike some of its creamier counterparts. Fresh tarragon lifts it further, making it even brighter and more fragrant.

Recipe: Spaghetti al Limone With Shrimp

An overhead image of creamy short pasta topped with asparagus and slivered seaweed.

Believe it or not: While asparagus tops this pasta, it actually takes third billing to the briny dasima (dried kelp) and gim (roasted seaweed) in this Eric Kim recipe. Both impart a brackishness, while heavy cream and toasted sesame oil add lusciousness.

Recipe: Creamy Asparagus Pasta

A skillet full of orzo topped with cheese and tossed with a tomato sauce.

This kid-friendly meatless pasta from Lidey Heuck recalls pizza with its layer of low-moisture mozzarella blanketing carby, tomatoey goodness. A smattering of basil cuts through the richness, as does spinach, adding a bit of balancing green.

Recipe: Cheesy Baked Orzo With Marinara

A skillet filled with fusilli pasta, herbs and broccoli sits next to a single serving.

Broccoli and cauliflower are equally great in this Dawn Perry dish, which lets the florets retain their crunch. Searing them on a hot pan blisters them, bringing out their caramelized notes. A spritz of lemon at the end only heightens that.

Recipe: Blistered Broccoli Pasta With Walnuts, Pecorino and Mint

A single serving of creamy pasta is topped with crispy artichokes.

Squeeze the water out of canned artichokes, fry them until crisp, and you’ll be on your way to restaurant-level flavor in no time. Andy Baraghani reserves some of the vegetables to cook in more oil until meltingly soft, adding a whole other layer of taste and texture.

Recipe: Crispy Artichoke Pasta

Bits of rotisserie chicken and greens top pasta tubes in a brothy sauce.

A store-bought bird can be a weeknight savior, cutting down cook times and adding substance to lighter meals, like this Christian Reynoso pasta. For maximum efficiency, he has you prep the chicken as the pasta boils, and he calls for precut greens, which wilt seductively under the heat of the brothy noodles.

Recipe: Rotisserie Chicken and Greens Pasta

An overhead image of a creamy pasta coated in a poblano-based sauce and topped with herbs and cheese.

A special-occasion dish in Mexico, this pasta from Paola Briseño-González, rich with crema and heavy cream, is a welcome sight anytime. The dairy balances the mellow heat of the poblanos, which are roasted over a flame until their skins become papery and removable. That’s the hardest part, but it yields a smokiness you won’t soon forget.

Recipe: Espagueti Verde (Creamy Roasted Poblano Pasta)

Orzo and asparagus sit in white bowls, topped with asparagus.

Asparagus is so much better in season, and this Ali Slagle recipe preserves its satisfying bite as it cooks quickly in the same pot as orzo. Toasted bread crumbs add crunch against the orzo’s gentle chew for a big, satisfying pasta that harnesses the season.

Recipe: Lemony Orzo With Asparagus and Garlic Bread Crumbs

An overhead image of spaghetti on a plate with pasta and tuna.

This staple of Somali households relies on jarred sauce and canned tuna, but it is still full of freshness in the form of cilantro leaves and the seven-spice mix xawaash. With its turmeric, cardamom and cumin, the blend gives the dish a rich boldness. Ifrah F. Ahmed teaches you to make your own, but store-bought is also just fine.

Recipe: Baasto iyo Suugo Tuuna (Pasta and Spiced Tuna Sauce)

A baking dish filled with short pasta topped with cheese and mixed with greens.

Inspired by the classic Greek spinach and feta pie, this Ali Slagle pasta may be the ultimate spring dish. Not only is it creamy and baked for those chilly cravings, but it also embraces all kinds of greens: spinach, of course, as well as arugula, dill and scallions.

Recipe: Baked Spanakopita Pasta With Greens and Feta

A plate topped with pasta, mushrooms and broccolini.

A brilliant maker of recipes, Hetty Lui McKinnon builds a quick stir-fry around broccolini, mushrooms and five spice, and tosses it with spaghetti instead of pairing with more traditional rice. It’s the kind of unconventional genius that changes weeknight cooking.

Recipe: Mushroom Pasta Stir-Fry

A platter topped with a green sauced pasta.

Andy Baraghani doesn’t miss, as this generous pasta salad that feels like summer proves. Eat it warm or cold. Swap the spinach for arugula. Use the short pasta of your choosing. Whatever you do, it’ll be so good.

Recipe: Extra-Green Pasta Salad

Three bowls of pasta in red sauce toppe with dollops of ricotta.

The vodka in pasta alla vodka isn’t a gimmick, but a clever hack. It’s said to help keep the sauce glossy and creamy, and to help you taste the flavors even more intensely. For this version, Eric Kim adds ricotta, a nod to a tomato soup from the now-closed Caffe Falai in Manhattan and a cooling counterpoint to the spiciness.

Recipe: Ricotta Pasta Alla Vodka

Pastas rarely come this easy, as Andy Baraghani proves with this weeknight dish that relies on a mere seven ingredients. Pasta water is essential here, as it binds a sauce of lemon, cream, garlic and cheese.

Recipe: Fresh Lemon and Chile Pasta

Gnocchi and pieces of sausage scattered with cheese and herbs sit in a cast-iron skillet.

Ali Slagle brings out the best in store-bought gnocchi, searing them in a skillet until they crisp, then cooking them in sausage fat and adding brightness with frozen peas — a taste of spring in no time flat.

Recipe: Crisp Gnocchi With Sausage and Peas

Short cut pasta with peppers, scallions, topped with pieces of blackened chicken breast.

Millie Peartree’s take on a popular pasta in Jamaican communities in New York and beyond, this dish is full of heat (from jerk seasoning paste and a Scotch bonnet chile) and bell peppers. It’s generous, easily welcoming shrimp or salmon instead of the chicken, and also patient, getting better with time.

Recipe: Rasta Pasta With Jerk Chicken

Tortellini topped with peas and prosciutto in a skillet.

Inspired by pasta alla papalina, Ali Slagle swaps out the standard long noodles for tortellini that cook in a brothy, creamy sauce. Delightfully salty slices of prosciutto and bright frozen peas, the best of the freezer aisle vegetables, balance it all out.

Recipe: One-Pot Tortellini With Prosciutto and Peas

A golden baked pasta in a cast-iron skillet topped with Cheddar.

Melissa Clark goes all in on sliced onions in this easy weeknight pasta. First, she melts them down into the tomato sauce, then mixes them with the cheese that melts on top for a budget dish that tastes like a million bucks.

Recipe: Baked Skillet Pasta With Cheddar and Spiced Onions

An overhead image of red-sauced pasta topped with slivered almonds.

Harissa replaces red pepper flakes, adding smokiness, in Nargisse Benkabbou’s twist on the Italian favorite. She keeps the traditional olives, anchovies and capers, but adds some toasted almonds for crunch.

Recipe: Harissa Puttanesca With Toasted Almonds

A plate topped with noodles tossed with olives and greens.

A puttanesca for spring! In this Melissa Clark favorite, she uses green garlic, scallion and baby spinach alongside anchovies, capers and olives for a pasta that’s both simple and full of umami in every bite.

Recipe: Pasta With Green Puttanesca

A skillet filled with pasta and lentils in a red sauce.

Lentils alone are warming, but add some pasta, and you’ll get a perfectly cozy meal that’s also easy on the wallet. Ali Slagle’s take on this Neapolitan classic is a simple vegetarian meal packed with pantry staples, and those are only where its charms begin.

Recipe: Pasta e Lenticchie (Pasta and Lentils)

A white bowl filled with pesto tossed shells.

Genevieve Ko dresses short pasta in an unexpected and highly enjoyable mint-broccoli pesto in this recipe that’s equally at home at dinner or lunchtime. For crunch, she tops it with walnuts, but if you’re not a fan, leave them out or use sunflower seeds, which still impart a gentle nuttiness.

Recipe: Broccoli-Walnut Pesto Pasta

A creamy, meaty pasta on a white platter.

You know and love a classic Bolognese. But this less-common version, which Amanda Hesser learned from Heidi da Empoli, an old friend, skips the tomato, basing its sauce instead on heavy cream and dried porcini. Since there’s no need to mellow tomato’s acidic bite, it comes together quickly, building long-simmered flavors in just an hour.

Recipe: Rigatoni With White Bolognese

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