Earthy Morel Mushroom Cream Sauce Pasta Recipe

There are few types of mushroom with the gravitas of the morel mushroom, and with good reason. These fabulous and highly flavorful fungi are harvested or foraged from the wild rather than cultivated like other types of mushrooms, making them much rarer and thus more prized. They are also notably tricky to find, often growing in more remote areas, as well as having a relatively short season. All of these combined factors contribute to the rather hefty price tag of the morel mushroom, making it an ingredient you'll only come across in the fancier dining establishments in town.

If you would like to indulge in some fine dining from the comfort of your own home, why not give this earthy morel mushroom cream sauce pasta recipe a go? Created by Tasting Table recipe developer Jennine Rye, this pasta dish combines simplicity with elegance, allowing the flavor of morel mushrooms to shine. They are cooked up in a rich, earthy, and creamy sauce before being combined with ribbons of tagliatelle to make a wonderfully sophisticated dinner option. If you are hoping to impress, look no further than this morel mushroom pasta dish. 

To begin this earthy morel mushroom cream sauce pasta recipe, first you will need to gather the ingredients. You will want butter, garlic, white wine, mushroom stock, frozen morels (or fresh, if you can source them), thyme, heavy cream, tagliatelle, Parmesan, and salt and pepper.

Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

Add the crushed garlic to the pan, and stir fry for 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the white wine, mushroom stock, morels, and fresh thyme to the pan, and leave the mixture to simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil.

Add the cream to the morel sauce, and season well with salt and pepper.

Cook the sauce for another 4 to 5 minutes and then remove from the heat.

Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or according to the packet's instructions, until al dente.

Drain the pasta and add it to the pan with the morel sauce.

Gently stir in the pasta to fully coat it in the creamy sauce.

Serve the creamy morel pasta topped with a little Parmesan.

Morel mushrooms sit well within the category of luxury ingredients, making them much more of an investment than other mushrooms. So before you begin working with them, it's good to know your options and what will work best for you and your budget. Fresh morel mushrooms are the hardest to find, and also the most expensive to buy. However, if you find yourself lucky enough to get your hands on some fresh ones, they will need to be carefully cleaned — their spongy, honeycomb texture is perfect for trapping dirt — and then they can be added to this recipe alongside the crushed garlic. Simply saute the morels for a few minutes before adding the liquids, as the recipe directs.

This recipe uses frozen morels, which are a little easier to get your hands on and ideal to keep in the freezer for special occasions. The one thing to remember with frozen morels is that they should be cooked from frozen. They are still packed full of flavor, but the freezing process does impact the structure of the mushrooms, making them a little less robust. Finally, dried morels are probably the easiest version to get your hands on, and will likely be stocked in larger supermarkets in your area. These will need to be soaked before they are cooked, but this process will give you delicious, morel-flavored stock to use in place of the mushroom stock in this recipe. Just make sure to remove any grit from the liquid before adding it to the sauce.

Who hasn't started to prepare dinner before realizing they are missing a component of the dish? Thankfully there are a variety of ways this morel mushroom pasta dish can be customized according to your personal preferences or the availability of ingredients in your kitchen cupboards. Though this recipe uses tagliatelle, and this type of pasta does make an excellent choice for cream sauces, this isn't the only pasta variety that works for this dish. While we recommend using a pasta shape that the cream sauce can cling to, it will taste just as delicious regardless of the variety you use. So, if you've got the morel cream sauce on the go before realizing you are out of tagliatelle, you can replace it with almost any of the many other types of pasta out there.

Similarly, if you don't have cream to hand, this recipe will still work and can taste just as delicious with the right substitute for heavy cream. A combination of milk and butter will make a worthy swap, with their high-fat content adding richness to the sauce. Depending on the resulting thickness of the sauce, you may want to add a little flour to thicken it up. Greek yogurt is also a good substitute and would give the sauce a delicious creaminess with a little bit more tang to it. Finally, if you are looking for a vegan-worthy substitute, coconut cream is a versatile ingredient that works wonderfully in this dish.