Creamy Mushroom-Fontina Pasta
Growing up in an Italian family, I ate pasta no less than once a week. If my mom didn’t make any during the week, I was sure to get my fill at my grandma’s on Sundays. The thing about traditional Sunday dinners in my Italian family? Pasta was always, always, always served with red sauce. The only exception was a rigatoni, Italian sausage and green pepper pasta dish that my grandma used to make with an olive oil dressing. Even then, she still made a batch of “regular spaghetti” with red sauce… you know, just in case someone felt like eating that, as well. Italian grandmas, you truly have to love them.
Since I grew up on a strict red sauce diet, I’ve been doing some experimenting with other types of pasta dishes. I’ve found that I really love a simple, creamy sauce, wide pasta noodles and mushrooms. This dish is a compilation of all of those elements, and utterly fantastic.
The sauce for this recipe is silky smooth and deliciously creamy, although it requires no actual cream. The secret? Using some of the liquid that the pasta was boiled in – it’s very starchy after boiling the pasta, and when paired with some butter, creates a perfect sauce with a creamy texture. For this dish, I also threw in some cubed fontina, which melts beautifully into the sauce. It’s creamy and has a mild flavor, which pairs really well with the cremini mushrooms. This just might be my new favorite pasta dish!
Are you from a red sauce or non-red sauce family? What are your favorite types of pasta?
One year ago: Jalapeño Cheddar Bagels
Two years ago: Salted Caramel Ice Cream
Creamy Mushroom-Fontina Pasta
Ingredients
- 10 ounces (283.5 g) dried wide pasta, I used mafalda
- ½ cup (113.5 g) unsalted butter, divided
- 20 ounces (566.99 g) cremini mushrooms, sliced
- ½ cup (5 g) finely chopped shallots, about 2 large shallots
- â…“ cup (80 ml) dry white wine
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 8 ounces (226.8 g) Fontina cheese, diced small
- ½ cup (30 g) chopped parsley
- Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Cook the pasta until al dente, according to the package directions. Drain and reserve ¾ cup of the cooking water.
- Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté half of the mushrooms, stirring occasionally, for 7 minutes; transfer to a plate. Repeat with 2 tablespoons butter and the remaining mushrooms, transferring them to the plate with the rest of the mushrooms.
- Add the shallots to skillet and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms back to the skillet, along with the wine; cook until the wine is reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add the reserved cooking liquid and bring to a boil. Stir in the remaining 4 tablespoons butter and season with 1 teaspoon salt.
- Reduce the heat to low and add the cooked pasta, cheese and parsley, tossing with the sauce until the pasta is coated and the cheese starts melting. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.
Notes
Did you make this recipe?
Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @thebrowneyedbaker on Instagram so I can see it!
I made this with gnocchi for my dad a few years ago when he was sick. He had only been eating custard for the prior week. He downed a huge bowl and went back for seconds. This recipe now holds a special place in my family’s heart since it was the last real meal he ate before he went back to custard and then passed on from Cancer.
My daughter loves this dish, and often requests it when she comes home to visit. I usually use onions instead of shallots, and that works fine. The last step requires a lot of stirring; have faith, and it will come together.
My sauce came out with a more watery texture. I would opt to not use the 3/4 cup of pasta water next time.
I made this delicious Creamy Mushroom Fontina Pasta recipe last night, and followed the instructions exactly, and my husband and I were speechless while we were eating it…..it was THAT amazing!
The fontina melted perfectly.Â
To slice all of the mushrooms, I simply used a “hard boiled egg cutter” and it worked like a charm.Â
This is now our very favorite pasta recipe. Â It is fabulous!!
I made this recipe last night and it was absolutely delicious. I had to use cavatapi (all I had on hand) but it worked just fine. This is going on my Tried and True Pinterest board!!
Hi, I’ve made this a couple times and the family loves it! However, I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. My sauce never seems to come out smooth and creamy. Â It always seems to be a little clumpy and sticks to everything. Not easy to wash off forks and dishes. I would love some suggestions and/or tips to help make is creamy.Â
Thank you
Hi Kathy, So awesome to hear your family has enjoyed this recipe! As for the clumpiness, it’s likely from the cheese. I would try cutting it smaller, or stirring until it’s melted, or thinning the sauce out with a little more pasta water if necessary.
Very tasty BUT fontina, like mozzarella, as has been noted, when it melts is sticky and stringy and doesn’t spread very well. This recipe would be improved by melting the cheese into a roux (flour and butter) first. That would cover the pasta as a sauce should instead of clumping.
This was ahh-mazing! A great quick meal. I used large fusilli and substituted the white wine with 50/50 apple cider vinegar and water and it came out great!!
Great stuff! I added some extra shallots and used raclette instead of fontina and it was delicious.Â
This may be the best thing I’ve ever tasted! Amazing. Thank you!
Hi, Michelle,
I made this last night, and it was amazing! Thanks so much for the great recipe! Nicki
BRAVO, Preparing this for my weekly dinner with daughter. Tested this last night, BRAVO!
This pasta dish was excellent! Thank you for sharing!!
Congratulatios on a superb pasta dish. Made this today. Outstanding! Thank you.
Thanks for a great recipe! We make it at least a couple times a month. I’ve found that, if you want to use ingredients more readily available in your pantry, rigatoni pasta and an Italian cheese blend work well in place of the mafalda pasta and fontina cheese.
I always said if I were stuck on a deserted island as long as I have pasta i will survive! This looks so good, I can’t wait to try it for Sunday dinner this weekend :)
Thanks so much for the recipe. I was in a foul mood when I got on the site. TV service disconnected – enough said. Anyway, so delighted to find this yumminess that my blood pressure has gone down and I am off to the grocery store to buy the ingredients and surprise my family. Who needs TV when there is good FOOD!
My husband and I ABSOLUTELY love this recipe. I made no changes. It’s perfect as it. Thanks so much for sharing,
Lynne, Cremini and Baby Bella are the same mushroom. You did good!!!!!
I had a package of baby bellas and some shallots to use up, so I went searching for a recipe with mushrooms and shallots, and found this. I didn’t have any parsley, but other than that an switching cremini to the baby bellas, no other changes. It was great, but texture was really weird – the cheese stayed all stringy and sticky. Still very good, but didn’t look like your pictures.
This is my and my husbands favorite week night meal! We make it every week! Sometimes I add some mild Italian sausage, and it puts it right over the edge for us! Thanks for the fabulous recipe!
Made this last night and we loved it! Thanks so much for the recipe!
Hi Michelle! This looks soo delicious! I was just wondering how you think it would hold up if I prepared it and then froze it for those hectic days once baby arrives! Do you have any freezer friendly meals on your site that you would recommend (I didn’t see a category for this in the recipe index!)? Thanks in advance :)! Alicia
Hi Alicia, I think you could freeze this successfully. Any of the mac and cheese recipes and the turkey tetrazzini are others that come to mind!
Hello i’m Fron Panamá and i love it aaaaaalllll recipe this blog
You hace excellent recipe. I have done severas of your recipe
Bon appetit.
Saludos desde Panamá.
Hi. First of all this looks fabulous. Is there any way in which I could substitute something else for the wine that is called for in this recipe?
Thank you.
P.s. – I adore your blog and your work. You inspire me. :) Thank you for sharing such beautiful recipes.
Hi Manali, Thank you for the kind words! You can substitute chicken broth for the wine in the recipe. Enjoy!
Thank you Michelle, I just made it tonight for dinner and it was amazing. My family loved it. Cheers. :)
My family is 100% a red sauce family as well :) Meat sauce with pasta/lasagna/or stuffed shells are served at every holiday! My mom has started making pasta for the past few years though, since my parents started growing their own basil.
That being said, I too have discovered the awesomeness of pasta water cream sauce! This sounds delicious!
I love my mushrooms, but my husband doesn’t. Im always bummed when I see something like this, get my mouth watering but know I can’t make it. :(
Hi Michelle,
What an amazing recipe! I made this dish tonight using pappardelle pasta and added blackened chicken! The flavors are amazing! Thanks again for a great recipe!!!!
Made this for dinner last night and LOVED it!!
This sounds great! I love fontina cheese! Need to try asap!
OK, seriously, this is one of the best pasta dishes I HAVE EVER MADE!! We ate it on Thursday, and we want to make it again tonight. The fontina is perfect, as is everything about it..thanks so much. This is simply amazing..and so easy.
My Italian family also had ‘macaroni’, which stood for whatever type of pasta was cooked, every Sunday as well as at least one other night a week. The ritual was that all branches of the family descended on my grandparents’ house after church. On non-holidays, when we ate at our respective homes, the moms would carry in large pots which they would fill with ‘gravy’ from Grandmom’s vat on the stove. I never heard the words pasta or sauce until I was in college. All red sauce was, and is, referred to as gravy. Anything brown is brown gravy and any thing white is white sauce. But I digress…can’t wait to try this recipe. Stumbled upon this site looking for Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes (I didn’t name them), which a friend gave us yesterday. Absolutely the best we’ve ever eaten!!!!!!!!!!!!
Made me chuckle; Italian family = pasta ONCE a week??? Crikey. Non-Italian here… and a four times a week man ;) lol
PS: chuck a bundle of fried bacon in with this too.
Grazis tanto!!!
When I was growing up, I thought each noodle had its own sauce — most of which were “red” (tomato based) but each with its own twist. My Italian mom was a wonderful cook. This recipe looks great. Thanks!
You can’t go wrong with mushrooms in a creamy melted cheese sauce!
Mind you you must be gutted this aint got no CORNED BEEF in it!!! :D lol
This is right up my alley! I love pasta but have never enjoyed red sauce. I won’t eat it on anything, pizza, pasta, etc.
when i saw this, i thought i had died and gone to heaven. This recipe is a must try for me!
XOXOJOANNIE
ANURBAN-EXPLORER.BLOGSPOT.COM
This looks amazing!!! Just wondering what wine you use.
Hi Stacey, I think that I used a sauvignon blanc… I had some leftover wine in the fridge so I used it up.
This recipe looks so amazing! Please come by my link party and post it for others to see! http://home-styled.blogspot.com/2013/04/link-party-show-your-style-sunday-2.html?m=1
I married into an Italian family. from Jersey. Once a week my mother-in-law always made spaghetti and meatballs! Good Italian food always available. This looks so yummy. Thanks for the excellent recipe!
creamy cheesy sauce is so much better than a red sauce. And this looks delicious.
i happened to have an insane amount of fontina cheese in the frig that my brother gave me so made this last night…YUM! very versatile recipe. i reduced butter to 2/3 of a cube, added parboiled asparagus & (2) fresh chopped roma tomatoes, and winde whole wheat egg-type noodles. served with coarse grated parm.
thank you…this recipe is a keeper!
Oh wow does this pasta look great!
omg. this is the dinner of my dreams. i can never resist fontina + mushrooms + pasta. you’re killing me!
Such a fantastic pasta! I enjoy pasta multiple times a week because it’s super simple and so darn tasty! This one is being added to the menu for sure!! Thanks for sharing…
-Shannon
Your pasta looks and sounds so delicious! Thanks for sharing this recipe!
We’re not Italian, but we eat pasta at least once a week, and it’s rarely with red sauce. Nothing against red sauce, it’s just that it gives my husband heart burn. Sooooo…this is exactly the kind of pasta dish that we love at my home…I especially love your choice of cheese. YUMMO!
This is amazing :) Love it!
Oh, this is on my short list for this week! I think I’ll get some dried porcini mushrooms to bump up the shroom taste! I’m drooling now, thanks for posting this recipe!
Did someone say fontina? I am so there! What marvelous pictures. Is there anything you can’t do :)
This was just meant to be…I received your post via email WHILE I was thinking of what to have for dinner! I need to make something with the mushrooms I bought yesterday…and you’ve sent this post out at the perfect time! You’re awesome!
Mmm a cream-less creamy sauce, what a delicious idea – this sounds wonderful Michelle! I am a HUGE pasta lover, unfortunately my hubby isn’t as crazy about it as I am – but I try to sneak it in whenever I can ;)
We have pasta about 5 times a week in our house. We are an Italian family because my husband is from the north of Italy. They do more than just red sauce, so we actually use it only about once a week.
Ooooooh my! This looks amazing. Pasta is definitely a staple in our house. I adore fontina and mushrooms. What a great pairing!
I love Italian food. Pasta is so divers, you can alter it in countless ways. I’m making mushroom risotto tonight!
Is 8 ounces of cheese approx 1 cup? This looks so good! I’m getting ready to make it soon;)
Hi Sonya, Usually 8 ounces of cheese measures about 2 cups shredded; I didn’t measure it cubed up for this recipe.
Yum, pasta, mushrooms and cheese? yes please:)
All my favorites in one dish. Looks so yummy :)
My mom used to make something very similar to this when I was a kid, minus the fontina, which I think she had probably never ever experienced as an Idaho farm girl! I can almost smell how delicious this will be! Thank you!
This is my kind of dish!! I love Italian food (being Italian and all) and love red sauces just as much as the white or wine sauces. Fontina cheese is the best!
Thats my kind of pasta! YUM :)
Sounds and looks delicious. I also grew up in an Italian family. My dad told me (he would have been 93 this year) that when he was growing up my Nana would make he and his 6 siblings plain pasta every day, and on Sundays, they got red sauce. Thanks for the post. Brought back a wonderful memory!
This looks divine! I love fontina cheese in sandwiches but never thought to put it in pasta – I see it melts beautifully. This looks delicious!
Pasta in a creamy mushroom sauce it my absolute heaven. And with fontina cheese… DIVINE!
I love pasta of any shape or size. As a kid, spaghetti with just some grated parmesean was a favorite and staple of my diet. To this day, it’s my “go to”. But I’ve discovered a delicious lemon olive oil from a local vendor (Sierra de Oro) that pairs perfectly with my pasta and parm.
I’m not Italian, but I sure do love pasta. I adore fresh ravioli and tortellini, and every shape there is. I love red sauce with Italian sausage, pesto, and sauces like this. This looks so creamy and delicious, and with all those mushrooms? Yum!
I live in Milwaukee and for us (unless someone actually is of Italian descent), the sauce is irrelevant. What’s important is that the pasta be cooked all the way. To us, al dente is still raw and considered “not done yet”. I KNOW al dente is the correct way to cook dry pasta, but even at 35, it’s still hard for me to get over the idea that I’m eating “raw” pasta.
Ohhhhh – this looks divine! Will definitely be pinning this one! :)
I’m coming over for dinner!
I love everything in this bowl. Swoon!
We had a ton of red sauce growing up too, but I really have come to love other sauces just as much, if not more. This one sounds awesome, especially with the mushrooms and fontina – yum :)
Looks delicious! I love mushrooms!
I came from a strick ‘red sauce’ family: they don’t even eat vodka sauce because of the touch of cream. But I’m the rebel among the first generation Americans: I’ll eat pasta any which way. I’m definitely making this mushroom and fontina pasta this week, possibly tonight!! Thanks.
I am sooooo into this! Yum!
This looks absolutely fantastic! However I live in Australia so we don’t have a large selection of cheese available at our supermarkets – what would you recommend as a substitute?
Hi Brianna, You could use any soft cheese that you like; totally personal preference depending on flavor. The original recipe called for taleggio or brie; you could also use mozzarella. Truly, though, anything soft that you enjoy would be fine to use here.
drool worthy! any other substitution for fontina. soft cheese like…..? does mozzarella becomes stringy? thanks
This recipe looks awesome, Michelle, and I am definitely planning on trying it. Mafalda was one of my Dad’s favorite pasta noodles. I, too, grew up in an Italian household, where pasta was served every single Sunday without fail.
Thank you! I’ve been looking for a good creamy but cream-less (my mom is pretty lactose-intolerant) pasta sauce and this sounds delicious
I love mushrooms in pasta, this looks fab!
That looks delicious!
Oh my goodness, this looks incredible! I love that you used mafalda.
I absolutely love fontina cheese! Great pictures too!
Ok, italian families are the best! I could eat pasta everyday! This pasta look so good! I love the noodles you chose and the mushrooms sound awesome in this!! YUMMMM!