15 Minute Italian Garden Pasta

Sometimes you just need a simple dinner and this is one of my go-to favorites, especially in the summer when tomatoes have their peak flavor. You don’t need to be a gardener to enjoy this pasta, though. It’s hard to have a green thumb. It doesn’t even need to be summer! With just 6 ingredients and only 15 minutes to make, you can have a dinner that feels garden-fresh in no time!

Put your tasty tomatoes to good use with our Balsamic Tomato Salad or Caprese Pasta Salad recipes.

If you’ve got that green thumb and have tomatoes piling up, then this is a great recipe for you. Or maybe it’s just dinner in the cold winter months, and you just want something simple to make. Listen, we’re eating this one year round too. It’s simple, it feels light and fresh, and it’s always delicious.

Ingredient Notes

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Use a good quality, cold-pressed olive oil. You won’t be cooking this oil. You’ll want to taste the bright, sometimes peppery, olive flavor.
• Spaghetti: Just use from the box and cook to al dente.
• Garlic: Freshly minced garlic provides the best flavor, but jarred minced garlic does work too. Jarred just has a less sweet, slightly more bitter flavor.
• Tomatoes: Use any tomato you like, enough for about 2 cups. Dice into small, bite-sized pieces.
• Fresh Basil: Freshly chop your basil leaves or slice into ribbons. Stack several fresh basil leaves on top of each other, then roll the bunch lengthwise and cut it into slices and voilà—perfect basil strips.

Tomato Time!

Any type of garden variety tomato would work in this recipe, but the fresher and more flavorful the better. You can’t go wrong with a few good heirloom tomatoes here, or a couple of large juicy beefsteak tomatoes.

3 or 4 tomatoes on the vine are a good option, same with 3 to 4 Roma tomatoes. Or you could even halve 1 pint of either grape or cherry tomatoes. Different varieties of tomatoes will all produce a slightly different flavor, but any tomato will work.

Pasta Options

This recipe calls for spaghetti pasta, but you can use any other kind of pasta you’d like. Other pasta options that would work well this recipe include angel hair pasta, shells, penne pasta, and linguine.

Add Vegetables

If you’re looking to add some extra nutrition to this pasta dish, try adding in some steamed vegetables. Asparagus and spinach are both great options. You can easily steam the asparagus in the microwave in a steamer bag and can even find them packaged that way in the grocery store. Spinach can be tossed right in without being cooked.