My 1-Ingredient Upgrade for Better Butter Pasta (It’s a Pantry Staple)

I wish someone—perhaps those with older kids—would have warned me about this stage of parenting. My once doe-eyed children who ate pretty much anything I’d cook and didn’t have trouble with textures or the colors of food have entered the age of independence. What they’re willing to eat for dinner has become a power play and a way for them to exert their autonomy—we’ve had plenty of nights when at least one child goes to bed hungry.

You’re not here for parenting advice—though if you have any to share with me kindly, I welcome it. What I can offer you is a kid-approved recipe for butter pasta that I can pull off in 10 minutes. My kids will eat it in silence and it’s luxurious enough to serve to adult guests. My trick for making next-level butter pasta is to use a key ingredient I keep stocked in my pantry: nutritional yeast.

What Is Nutritional Yeast?

Nutritional yeast is sold as dry golden flakes and is beloved for its cheesy, nutty flavor that’s full of umami and health benefits. It’s an inactive yeast that’s grown on sugar cane and beet molasses.

I used to chalk it up to being hippie food for vegans, but since Senior Editor Laurel Randolph introduced it to me last year, I keep a bag of Trader Joe’s nutritional yeast next to my salt and pepper at all times.

Whenever a recipe calls for Parmesan, as butter pasta often does, I add a heaping tablespoon of nutritional yeast. It melts beautifully into the butter and adds a similar boost of funky cheese flavor with the added benefit of being shelf-stable and a fraction of the price.

How I Make Butter Pasta with Nutritional Yeast

If you have a butter pasta recipe that you like, add one heaping tablespoon of nutritional yeast to the melted butter. That’s it! Even if you don’t use any cheese, you’ll get a big boost of cheesy flavor.

Here’s my 10-minute butter pasta recipe:

Bring eight cups of water and two teaspoons of salt to a boil with the lid on. This is half of the amount of water that’s typically needed to cook dry pasta, but I do this for two reasons. First, the water will boil faster. Second, after the pasta cooks, the water will be ultra-concentrated with starches from the pasta and can be used to thicken the butter sauce.

When the water comes to a boil, drop one pound of dry pasta in to cook, stirring it occasionally so they don’t stick to each other.

In the meantime, melt one stick of unsalted butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Continue stirring for four to five minutes until the butter takes on a lightly golden color—this is called brown butter.

Take the skillet off the heat so that the butter stops browning and doesn’t burn. Stir in one heaping tablespoon of nutritional yeast and a few cracks of black pepper.

Scoop out the cooked pasta with tongs or a strainer and add it to the skillet. Stir to coat the pasta with the butter. Scoop out about 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water and stir it into the pasta until luxuriously silky. You can taste and add more salt if you’d like, but I rarely do because the pasta water is plenty salty.