Ditch the Heavy Cream and Make This Dairy-Free Vodka Sauce

I have no dietary issues with eating heavy cream, but if I’m scrounging around trying to puzzle together a last-minute dinner idea, pasta with vodka sauce rarely materializes. Not because of the vodka aspect (I happen to have plenty of that at the moment), but because I rarely have cream on hand. By a happy accident, I ended up making a simple pantry pasta that convincingly emulated the boozy cream sauce without the cream.

The concept is simple: Add canned cannellini beans to your tomato sauce and let it simmer away. Cannellini beans are prized for their velvety texture, and even the aquafaba (the cloudy water in the can) is creamier than most other bean varieties. The beans eventually break apart, releasing their silky starches and thickening the sauce while tempering the tangy tomato flavor. Don’t think of this as a way to fool anyone into ditching cream; there’s no mistaking that this gravy has beans in it. Instead, I like to appreciate this as simply a scrumptious vodka sauce recipe. 

Helpful tools for your next pasta night:

• ExcelSteel Heavy Duty Colander
• KitchenAid Stainless Steel 2-quart Pot

How to make dairy-free vodka sauce

This recipe begins with the same preparation as any vodka sauce recipe—softening the aromatics and adding the vodka and tomatoes after—but instead of stirring in cream, the cannellini beans take a bit of simmering at the end. (To make a vegan vodka sauce, just omit the pancetta.)

1. Sauté the aromatics

Coat the bottom of a medium pot with a drizzle of olive oil and turn the heat to medium-low. Add the garlic, shallot, and minced pancetta with a pinch of salt. Sauté these ingredients until the pork begins to crisp and the aromatics become translucent. 

2. Add the liquids

Stir in the red pepper flakes and add the vodka. Allow the vodka to reduce by half. This doesn’t take much time—about a minute or two. 

3. Crush the creamy beans

Add the crushed tomatoes and canned cannellini beans with their aquafaba, and a bit of water. The beans will thicken the sauce and the water will prevent any starch from burning onto the bottom of the pot. Cover the pot with a lid and set it to simmer gently for 15 minutes. Every five minutes or so, stir the sauce and smash some beans with your spoon. Sometimes I use a potato masher if I have stubborn beans. If your sauce is getting too thick add a couple tablespoons of water. Once most of the beans have broken up and the sauce is the right consistency, taste it. If it needs more salt or seasonings, adjust it now. Then toss in the pasta and serve.

Note that the beans will leave behind their skins, so the sauce will always have some subtle texture to it. This doesn’t bother me, but if you want the sauce to be silkier, push the beans through a strainer (the holes shouldn’t be too small) before you add them to the sauce. The starchy pulp will go through and the skins will be left behind. 

The following recipe makes two servings, and it’s my lazy version of the above. I don’t always have the perfect ingredient list, but the lesson here is that there’s usually some kind of replacement in my kitchen. If you think, “this could function the same way as that,” give it a try. Instead of pancetta, I had cold cut sliced ham. Instead of crushed tomatoes, I had a random unfinished jar of tomato sauce. And you know what? It rocks. 

Lazy Dairy-Free Vodka Sauce Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 shallot, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 slices ham, chopped
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper flakes
• ¼ cup vodka
• ½ cup jarred tomato sauce
• ? cup water
• ½ can cannellini beans with aquafaba

1. Add the olive oil to a medium pot and set the heat to medium-low. Add the shallot, garlic, ham, and salt. Stir and sauté for a couple minutes until the shallot becomes soft and translucent. 

2. Add the red pepper flakes and the vodka. Stir, and let the liquid reduce by 50%. This will only take about a minute. 

3. Stir in the tomato sauce, beans and aquafaba, and water. Cover the pot with a lid and reduce the mixture to a simmer. Stir the sauce every five minutes, crushing beans as you stir. If the sauce ever gets too thick, add a splash of water to the mixture. After about 15 minutes the sauce should be thick, creamy, and ready to eat. Toss in your favorite pasta and serve immediately.