Pasta, spinach spaghetti is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 8 recipes to get you started.

What is pasta, spinach spaghetti?

Spinach spaghetti is ordinary round spaghetti with cooked spinach blended into the dough, which tints the strands a soft green. The spinach is there for color far more than for taste.

The flavor it adds is mild. A faint grassy, vegetal note sits behind the usual wheat, but nobody mistakes a forkful for eating greens.

It cooks and acts just like plain spaghetti. Same long thin strand, same boil, same al dente bite, only green.

How to Use It

Boil it like any pasta, in plenty of well salted water. Dried spinach spaghetti runs about 9 to 11 minutes; taste a strand a minute before the box time and pull it while it still has bite.

Let the green show. A light oil or a thin vegetable sauce keeps the color on display, as in Bell Pepper, Zucchini, Mushroom Spaghetti with Olives, where the green strands read clearly under the vegetables.

It is also a natural for cold pasta salad, where the color earns its keep in a bowl. A mixed Italian Bean & Pasta Salad uses that to good effect.

Sauces and Pairings

Being a round strand, spinach spaghetti suits clingy, emulsified sauces the same as the plain version. Garlic and olive oil, light seafood, and brothy vegetable mixtures all wrap the strand and leave the green visible.

Seafood looks especially good against it, as in Grand Hotel Pasta & Fish.

The common mistake is to bury it. A thick, dark meat ragu or a heavy red sauce coats every strand and hides the color, which defeats the reason for buying green spaghetti. Use plain spaghetti for those and save the green for lighter plates.

Substitutes

Plain spaghetti is the direct swap when color does not matter, cooking the same and tasting cleaner. Spinach linguine or spinach fettuccine keep the green but trade the round strand for a flat ribbon, better suited to cream sauces.

For green without spinach in the dough, toss plain spaghetti in a spinach or basil pesto; you lose the dyed strand but gain real herb flavor. Tricolor spaghetti, where it exists, brings the green plus tomato red in one box.

Buying and Storing

Dried spinach spaghetti keeps a year or two in a sealed container kept cool and dry. The green dulls with age and light, so a bright box plates better than a faded, gray-green one; store it away from a sunny windowsill.

Cooked spinach spaghetti keeps three or four days in the fridge. Reheat it gently with a splash of the pasta water or a little oil so the strands loosen without going gummy.

Quick facts

In Chinese

意大利面，菠菜面条

British (UK) term

Pasta, spinach spaghetti

en français

pâtes, spaghetti aux épinards

en español

pasta, espagueti espinaca

Recipes using pasta, spinach spaghetti

There are 8 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 8 recipes