Pasta, spinach fettuccine is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 18 recipes to get you started.

What is pasta, spinach fettuccine?

Spinach fettuccine is the green version of the flat fettuccine ribbon, with cooked spinach worked into the dough. The spinach is there mostly for color, turning the noodle a soft jade green.

What it adds in flavor is subtle. There is a faint vegetal, grassy note, but most of the taste is still wheat and egg, so do not expect the noodle to taste like a plate of greens.

Treat it as plain fettuccine, just dyed green. It cooks and behaves exactly the same.

How to Use It

Cook it like any pasta, in plenty of salted water. Dried spinach fettuccine runs about 10 to 12 minutes, while the fresh refrigerated kind cooks in 2 to 3, so taste a strand a minute early and pull it at al dente.

The green color is the selling point, so let it show. Light sauces that leave the noodle visible do more for the plate than a heavy red sauce that buries it.

A classic trick is to toss it with plain fettuccine for a two-tone tangle of green and gold, the dish Italians call straw and hay, as in this Favourite Straw & Hay Pasta.

Sauces That Show the Color

Cream and butter sauces are the natural fit, the same as for plain fettuccine, because the flat ribbon carries them well and the pale sauce sets off the green.

Seafood is a particularly handsome match, as in Scallop & Smoked Salmon Pasta, where pink salmon against green noodles looks as good as it tastes. It also takes a bolder turn happily, as a Cajun Jambalaya Pasta leans on the sturdy ribbon to hold a spiced, chunky sauce.

The mistake is drowning it in a dark, heavy tomato or meat sauce. That hides the one thing the green noodle was bought for, so if you want red sauce, plain pasta makes more sense.

Substitutes

Plain fettuccine is the direct swap whenever color is not the point. It cooks the same and tastes nearly identical. Spinach tagliatelle or spinach linguine trade in freely too, keeping both the green and the flat shape.

For the color without spinach, beet or tomato pasta brings red, and a tricolor mix brings all three at once. If you only have plain pasta and want green, a spinach pesto sauce gets you most of the way to the look and adds real spinach flavor besides.

Buying and Storing

Dried spinach fettuccine, sold in straight strands or coiled nests, keeps a year or two in a sealed container somewhere cool and dry. The green fades over long storage, so a vivid box will plate better than a dull, olive-toned one.

Fresh spinach fettuccine is sold refrigerated and lasts only a few days. Freeze it if you will not use it soon and cook it straight from frozen.

Cooked spinach fettuccine keeps three or four days in the fridge and reheats gently with a splash of milk or cream to bring a sauce back.

Quick facts

Where to find pasta, spinach fettuccine: Pasta, spinach fettuccine is usually found in the pasta section or aisle of the grocery store or supermarket.

In Chinese

面食，意大利细面条菠菜

British (UK) term

Pasta, spinach fettuccine

en français

épinards fettucine

en español

fettuccine de espinacas

Recipes using pasta, spinach fettuccine

There are 18 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 18 recipes