This two ingredient pumpkin pasta doesn’t get much easier than this! You can make homemade pasta with just flour and pumpkin puree. Making pasta at home can seem daunting, but with this two ingredient pumpkin pasta, it’s easier than ever. Technically if you count the salt, the pasta dough has three ingredients, but I like to focus on the two main ingredients, as you could make the dough without salt, but it probably wouldn’t taste as good.
I first came across this concept in a recipe I found on Food Network (linked here) but adjusted the recipe so it only makes three or four servings. You can use this pasta dough as you would any traditional pasta dough, but I find that the quickest and easiest kind of pasta to make is cavatelli. I like to roll mine on this gnocchi paddle to give the cavatelli ridges because it helps the pasta hold onto sauce better.
Two Ingredient Pumpkin Pasta Dough:
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup pumpkin puree
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Add the flour to a mixing bowl, then add in the pumpkin and salt. Mix with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms, then ditch the spoon and continue to use your hands to knead the dough. Turn the dough out onto a work surface so that it’s easier to work with. To knead, press the heel of your hand into the ball of dough, pushing forward and down. Rotate the ball a quarter turn and do it again. You’ll want to keep going until the dough no longer looks powdery. It should have a smooth, elastic texture. If your dough feels wet and tacky, add more flour as necessary. This will take about 3 to 5 minutes.
Note that you could do this in a stand mixer and just plop the ingredients in the bowl and use a dough hook to knead the dough until the mixture comes together, but I always prefer to do it by hand.
To roll the cavatelli, start by lining a baking sheet with a clean tea towel. This will give you a surface to place your rolled pasta on so that it doesn’t stick together.
Next, pull off a golf ball size piece of dough and roll it into a thin, 1 cm log. Cut the log into 1-2 cm pieces, then use your index and middle fingers to press down on the dough and roll towards you to create an indentation. You can also use your thumb to make the indentation and press away from you if that feels easier. For a full tutorial, here’s a quick video on how to roll cavatelli. It can be a little confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s simple and much faster than having to roll out and cut a pasta shape line fettucine.
When you’re ready to cook, bring a large pot of water to a boil, then add in a few big pinches of kosher salt to help season the pasta as it cooks. Add the cavatelli to the pot and give it a good stir to prevent sticking. Once they are cooked, the cavatelli will float to the top.
Once it’s fully cooked, I usually sauté this two ingredient pumpkin pasta in butter and sage, then stir in a spoonful or two of the pasta water to bring it all together, but you can prepare this pasta any way you like! Enjoy!