Linguine with Spinach and Sun-Dried Tomato Cream Sauce takes just 30 minutes to make! This simple Italian pasta is a great choice for a weeknight dinner! Linguine is generously coated in a comforting creamy sauce made with garlic and Parmesan cheese.
This delicious linguine has been inspired by the sun-dried tomato pasta I made a while back. This recipe features the best homemade pasta sauce you’ll ever try! It’s full of flavor and color! The creamy linguine Alfredo sauce is made with garlic, paprika, cream, and shredded Parmesan cheese.
This linguine recipe makes a great meatless dinner. If you crave some protein, you can easily add grilled chicken or cooked shrimp to the dish. Just like in this simple chicken pasta or this shrimp pasta.
Linguine with creamy alfredo sauce
- Creamy comfort food. In this recipe, linguine is smothered in a simple homemade alfredo sauce made with cream, garlic, and Parmesan cheese. The silky sauce coats the linguine to produce one of the most comforting and decadent pasta dishes you’ll ever try! Sun-dried tomatoes and spinach add so much flavor to the creamy deliciousness!
- 30-minute recipe. This beautiful pasta dish takes only 30 minutes to make.
- Only 9 ingredients. Simple recipes are the best! This recipe uses basic ingredients that you can easily buy in any grocery store.
- Beautiful presentation. This easy pasta makes a beautiful and colorful presentation. Creamy alfredo sauce has a light pink color thanks to sun-dried tomatoes and paprika. Spinach also adds vibrancy to the linguine!
What is linguine?
- Linguine is a long, thin, ribbon-style pasta of Italian origin. It’s similar to fettuccine and spaghetti. Linguine is like flattened spaghetti and not as wide as fettuccine.
- Linguine originated in Genoa of Liguria region, Italy.
- Linguine is usually served with seafood or with pesto sauce. Other common dishes made with linguine include puttanesca sauce, linguine carbonara, and linguine with clams.
- Linguine is made with durum wheat semolina.
Fun fact: Did you know that “linguine” in Italian means “little tongues”? “Linguina” means “little tongue” in Italian, and “linguine” is plural of “linguina”. The root of the word is “lingua” (Latin) which means tongue.
Substitutions
This pasta dish is very flexible, and you can use all kinds of different ingredients:
- Don’t have linguine? Use spaghetti or fettuccine pasta.
- What can you use to replace Parmesan? Use Mozzarella cheese, Pecorino Romano, or Asiago cheese.
- Don’t have spinach? Use Swiss chard, arugula, or kale.
Linguine vs. fettuccine
- Both linguine and fettuccine are ribbon style, long strand pasta. Fettuccine is a flat thick pasta. Fettuccine is noticeably wider than linguine. Linguine is more like flattened spaghetti.
- The most common dish made with fettuccine is fettuccine alfredo. Linguine is usually served with seafood, pesto, carbonara sauce, or with clams.
Linguine vs. spaghetti
- Both linguine and spaghetti are ribbon-style long-strand pasta. They are very similar in shape. Linguine is like a flatter version of spaghetti.
- Spaghetti is usually served with tomato sauce or meat. Linguine is traditionally served with seafood or pesto.
Sauces that go well with linguine
- White cream pasta sauce. Linguine tastes amazing when coated in the white cheese Italian pasta sauce. Make simple white cream pasta sauce for linguine or any other pasta!
- Sun-dried tomato cream sauce. Sun-dried tomatoes and basil in a homemade creamy Mozzarella sauce will make a perfect sauce for linguine. This sun-dried tomato pasta recipe shows you how to make it.
- Alfredo sauce. Make linguine alfredo by following this recipe for chicken broccoli alfredo. You can even add chicken and broccoli, or keep them out of the recipe and just follow the steps for the alfredo sauce.
Gluten-free friendly recipe
- You can easily make this recipe gluten free by using gluten free linguine.
What to serve with linguine
- Bread. Serve Baguette or Italian garlic bread.
- Fresh salad. Make this tomato cucumber avocado salad or tomato mozzarella salad.
- Spinach salad. Because this linguine has spinach, it would be a great combination to serve it with a basic spinach salad. Just toss together some spinach leaves with shredded Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Or, if you want something more sophisticated, try this spinach salad with prosciutto and pears. Or, make a spinach salad with beets.
How to cook linguine al dente
- To cook pasta al dente, cook linguine in salted boiling water about 2 minutes less than indicated on the package instructions. I cooked linguine for about 9 minutes in boiling water.
Cooking Tips
- Reserve some pasta water. Use it to thin out the cream sauce if it gets too thick.
- Make sure to season the creamy linguine sauce with just the right amount of salt. That means you might have to add more salt than indicated in the recipe. Salt really helps to bring out all the flavors!
How to prepare the sauce for linguine – step-by-step
1) Cook chopped sun-dried tomatoes and minced garlic with olive oil on medium heat, for about 30 seconds.
2) Add 1 cup of half-and-half, paprika, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer.
3) Add shredded Parmesan cheese. Stir for a couple of minutes until the cheese melts.
4) Add spinach.
5) Keep stirring on medium heat until the spinach wilts, about 1 minute.
6) Add cooked and drained linguine to the sauce. Stir well. Taste the linguine, and season with more salt, if needed.
Other pasta recipes
Below are other meatless pasta sauce recipes that will go great with linguine. What’s beautiful about these recipes is that you can easily add protein. Add grilled chicken, pan-seared scallops or seared shrimp.
- Creamy Spinach Mushroom Pasta with Caramelized Onions
- Sun-Dried Tomato Mushroom Pasta
- Four Cheese Garlic White Cream Pasta Sauce
- 8 oz linguine
- 1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes , chopped
- 3 cloves garlic , minced
- 1 cup half-and-half
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese , shredded
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 6 oz spinach
- 5 basil leaves fresh, finely chopped
- Cook linguine according to package instructions. Drain.
- Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet on medium heat.
- Add chopped sun-dried tomatoes and minced garlic. Cook on medium heat for about 30 seconds, constantly stirring.
Add 1 cup of half-and-half, paprika, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer.
- Add 1/2 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese (half of what the recipe calls for). Stir for about 30 seconds or longer until the cheese melts. If the sauce is too thin, gradually add more cheese. Keep stirring around all of the skillet for a couple of minutes.
- Note: if the sauce gets too thick, add more half-and-half.
- Add spinach. Keep stirring on medium heat until the spinach wilts, about 1 minute.
- Add cooked and drained linguine to the sauce. Stir well.
- Taste the linguine and add more salt, if needed. Top with finely chopped fresh basil leaves.
What is half-and-half? To substitute for 1 cup of half-and-half, do this: combine 1/2 cup of whole milk with 1/2 cup of heavy cream.
i made this tonight and it was delicious! i substituted spinach for broccoli. next time i won’t use olive oil, i think the oil in the sun dried tomatoes is enough. but i will be making it again!
Thank you, Glenda! Glad you tried this recipe and enjoyed it!
Winner winner chicken dinner… checked off a lot of boxes. Succinctly written, limited ingredients, (added more garlic),limited # of steps, full-flavored,tasty. My 1st recipe with you, knocked it out of the park. will return
thanks
Matt
Thank you, Matt, for such a positive comment! So glad you liked this recipe!
Love it, so easy and versatile. Added mushrooms second time around and can add or take away anything with little to no challenge. Great for making lunch for the week for my husband and myself. Very tasty-only complaint is that it doesn’t last long here because it’s too good!- thank you!
You are very welcome! So glad you’ve enjoyed this recipe. 🙂
WOW!!! What an easy, delicious recipe!
I would not have thought to put paprika in a pasta dish. It was the perfect spice. Flavor was great. I did use some baby Bella mushrooms and an Italian chicken sausage from Aldis . I needed to use up those items.
If you want to impress your friends with an easy pasta dish for dinner, this is the one!
Rita, thank you so much for such a positive comment! So glad you tried this recipe and enjoyed it!
This came out amazing! I did double it and make a few minor changes. We grilled bnls/sknls chicken breast in a cast iron skillet for a good crisp outside. Salt and pepper on each side, tiny amount of coconut oil. Removed chicken to a plate to keep warm, added half a diced onion to the pan, stirred about 1min, deglazed pan with 1/3c white wine. The onions pick up so much flavor with this step and get nice and tender for those who don’t like crisp onions in pasta. Then followed the rest of the recipe. We used half parm, half Asiago cheese and added a pinch of crushed red pepper. Diced the chicken to top this and it was aaaaamazing!!!! Definitely a family favorite 🙂
Thank you, Amanda, for such a detailed comment and for sharing the changes you made. Your additions sound delicious: grilled chicken, onion, white wine.
This is definitely a keeper recipe! We made it with bow tie pasta and added sliced and browned Polska kielbasa sausage to the sauce. It was super yummy. We also paired it with a spring mix salad with a lemon vinaigrette on the side.
So glad you enjoyed this pasta, Suzanne! Adding the kielbasa sausage sounds so good!
Do you really need 6 oz of spinach? That’s over a bag full of spinach.
The spinach does reduce a lot when cooked. You could reduce the amount of spinach in half, if you like, and then see if you need to add more.
The idea seems awesome but the recipe didn’t go over too well. With the salad, we left the pesto basil on the side in case someone didn’t want it. i mixed it in (the lemon was put throughout the salad) and the basil pesto took away from the taste of the salad. During my second helping, I stayed away from the pesto. Regarding the main dish, I made it to the recipe exactly but the half-and-half hardened up once i took the flame off medium-high. So I had to run over to the grocery store to get heavy whipping cream. The pasta came out delicious as the recipe says but with heavy whipping cream!
Thank you for sharing your feedback! If the sauce thickened, you could thin it out by adding more half-and-half or add reserved pasta water.
Do you use regular sun dried tomatoes (those in oil) or the bagged ones? (Dry) 🙂
This isn’t my recipe but since you’re not getting an answer I’ll try. I make a few different pasta’s with sun dried tomatoes and always use the ones that come in a jar with olive oil.
I used sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil from a glass jar.
I used sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil (in a glass jar).