One-Pot Pesto Spaghetti with Broccoli, Spinach & Peas

Packed with green veggies, my one-pot pesto spaghetti with broccoli, spinach and peas takes barely fifteen minutes to make. It’s my go-to supper for lazy Sunday evenings and a fast healthy vegetarian dinner to boot.

The few minutes of preparation time are mainly spent boiling the kettle (or bringing saucepan up to boil) and getting the ingredients out. Only the broccoli requires any chopping; I draw the line at buying pre-cut florets but you may not!

Pesto spaghetti or not? Choosing ribbons of pasta

Technically this is linguine rather than pesto spaghetti although you can make this with any ribbon style pasta such as tagliatelle, fresh or dried. I find plain spaghetti tends to escape as you twist it with your fork whereas the flattened surface of linguine strands makes them easier to twirl into bundles.

I’m also fond of Aldi’s Special Selection Bucatini, a fat spaghetti noodle with a fine hole running down the centre. These get fatter when cooked and have a more luxurious mouth feel.

Fresh vs frozen green vegetables

I make this pesto spaghetti dish often although the green veg used, and whether it’s fresh or frozen, varies according to what I have to hand. Pebble soup fashion, you can skip one of these veg if you are lacking one of them.

For me, the broccoli florets will almost always be fresh, although without the convenience of simmering pasta water, I’d be steaming florets in the microwave. I find broccoli so quick to prepare from fresh – and it keeps well in the fridge – that I see no need to buy frozen. Broccoli florets popped into the pasta water need only a few minutes’ to cook through.

My peas will always be frozen, and although I like fresh beans, I am more likely to buy frozen green beans than fresh ones. I like how you can quickly snap the beans into shorter pieces rather than faffing with topping and tailing pointy bits from the ends.

Bagged baby spinach leaves are my preference, they look better visually and disperse better through the pasta whereas frozen spinach bricks tend to stay in a clump even when cooked. That said, I’ll happily add frozen spinach if I don’t have fresh leaves in the fridge.

As an alternative to one of the above, fried half moon slices of fresh courgette are also very tasty.

Jars or pesto vs homemade pesto?

I have made my own pesto infinite times. It’s my favourite way to use up wilting rocket leaves. You can by all means use homemade pesto here – such as the one used for my conchiglioni with pesto. But unless you have pesto made already, it defeats the point of this being a fast one-pot dish.

I am mindful that the cheese ratio in supermarket jars of pesto is getting skimped nowadays so I don’t tend to buy the cheapest kind on the shelf. A more premium pesto jar is likely to be more authentic Genovese style and will stretch to three dinners anyway – so it won’t break the bank.

A scattering of cheese or something else?

I keep a bag of grated Parmesan to sprinkle over my pasta and other Italian dishes. The graininess of a hard Italian cheeses – you might use Grana Padano or pecorino – definitely elevates the umami factor here, as does an optional splash of Worcestershire sauce.

My other favourite topping for pesto spaghetti is vegan friendly nutritional yeast, although this dish will not be vegan unless you’ve used or made a vegan pesto.

A final finishing touch might also be a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and a grinding of black pepper.

One-pot pesto spaghetti for the Monthly Mingle

It’s been a while since I published a new recipe but when I heard Meeta at What’s For Lunch Honey? was rebooting her Monthly Mingle, I just had to take part. I’ve known Meeta since the earliest days of this site as she was a speaker at the very first Food Blogger Connect – a day on which I met more new life-long friends than any other occasion in my life. We last met up in Brighton, 2023.

The Mingle theme is celebrating friendship and connections – I invariably think of my Italian friends Anastasia and Marco whenever I eat Italian food. In those days, they used to bring wodges of Parmesan back from Italy on the plane although I’m not sure you’d get away with that now.

Pesto spaghetti is absolutely a crowd-pleasing meal you could make for any friends who unexpectedly stay for dinner!

Storing pesto spaghetti to serve later?

Although you can eat pesto spaghetti cold as a packed lunch, my preference then would be a shorter shaped pasta that’s more easily eaten with a fork. Cold ribbon pasta is just a bit weird – although I have no such qualms about cold leftover chicken noodles so maybe I’m being illogical.

I suppose you *could* freeze leftover pesto spaghetti but this also feels a bit strange. The point of this dinner is that you can control the amount being made accurately enough that it’s not the kind of thing you’ve got a gigantic cauldron left afterward.

But yes, you can freeze it but why would you when half the vegetables were frozen anyway? On the assumption you buy fresh broccoli regularly (I certainly do), pesto spaghetti is a store cupboard ingredients recipe.

More spaghetti and noodle dishes with freezer ingredients

Pasta and noodle dishes supplemented with freezer ingredients are one of my kitchen stand-bys – take a look at my chilli mussels with pennoni pasta or quorn chicken noodle soup or tom yum prawn noodle soup.

Bookmark this one-pot pesto spaghetti on Pinterest if you’d like to save it for later. Once you’ve seen how quick and easy it is to make, you’ll be making it every Sunday night like I do!