Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta Recipe

This butternut squash pasta recipe made with rigatoni and a silky smooth squash sauce is the ultimate fall comfort food.

One of my favorite things about butternut squash is how silky and smooth it turns out when you blend it after cooking. If you’ve tried our butternut squash soup, you already know what I mean. In this incredible baked pasta, we cook cubes of squash until soft with a mixture of milk and cream, then blend it into a thick, velvety sauce.

Before serving, we toss the cooked pasta with that creamy squash sauce and fresh mozzarella, then bake until hot and bubbly. It’s outrageously comforting, and easily one of our favorite fall pastas this year!

Key Ingredients

• Squash: Use one medium butternut squash for this pasta. Or about 4 cups of cubed squash. If you’re unsure about peeling and cubing the squash, see our roasted butternut squash recipe, which shows step-by-step shots for each step.
• Pasta: We love large rigatoni for this, but any short-cut pasta, like penne or ziti, works well.
• Onion and Garlic: We sauté these with the butternut squash for the creamy sauce. We like yellow or sweet onion and fresh garlic.
• Cream, Milk, and Wine (or Broth): These combine to make our creamy sauce. Half-and-half is a good substitute for the milk and cream. The wine is optional, but it does add a little extra flavor. If you’d prefer to leave it out, use a light chicken or vegetable broth instead.
• Olive Oil and Butter: We cook the veggies in olive oil, then blend in 2 tablespoons of butter. The butter adds flavor and makes the sauce even more velvety.
• Cheese: We love using two varieties of mozzarella cheese. First, we add fresh mozzarella to the pasta, which melts into little pockets of cheese as the squash pasta bakes in the oven. Second, we scatter shredded block mozzarella (not fresh) on top of the pasta, which melts and browns. As an option, you can also add a little blue cheese to the sauce, which tastes incredibly delicious, but you do have to enjoy the flavor of blue cheese.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta

First, cook the butternut squash with onion and garlic. You can do this while you boil the water for your pasta. We cook the squash on the stove, which is much quicker than roasting. Sauté the cubed squash with the onion, garlic, a couple of pinches of salt, and olive oil in a skillet or medium saucepan. Covering the pot with a lid helps soften the squash in the middle and takes about 10 minutes.

Then, make the creamy sauce. Remove about a third of the squash and save it for later. To the remaining squash in the pan, pour in the white wine, milk, and cream, and simmer until the squash is really soft.

Blend until silky smooth. Transfer the squash and cream mixture to a blender. Add some starchy water from the pasta pot and a little butter (plus the blue cheese, if using!), then blend until perfectly smooth.

Finally, mix everything together and bake. In a large baking dish, stir together the cooked pasta, butternut squash cream sauce, and the reserved chopped squash. Add a generous amount of fresh mozzarella pearls (or chopped pieces), spread it into an even layer, and top with shredded block mozzarella. Bake uncovered for about 30 minutes, then if you’d like a golden top, broil for 1 to 2 minutes more.

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