Easy Nduja Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower

If you aren’t familiar with the wonderful creation that is nduja, you need to be and you need this nduja pasta in your life right now! Pasta is one of those carbalicious delights that is quite often demonized, but we can promise you there is no need for that! There's nothing wrong with pasta and enjoying a big plateful of carbs with a side of more carbs (garlic bread, ha!).

This nduja pasta is spicy and has a lovely smokiness from the roasted cauliflower, dotted with flecks of tangy capers and garlic. What's not to love, right? If you're a fan of spicy, definitely check out our gochujang noodles too.

In our house, pasta has started to be a bit more of a frequent occurrence, not just because of its ease, but because we love making super flavorful sauces to go with it. It really does make a huge difference! Check out our lemon garlic shrimp pasta, tomato spinach pasta and our creamy chicken pasta bake that you’ll love too!

This nduja pasta recipe is very easy to make. The most time consuming part about it is roasting some cauliflower in the oven and that can be done whilst preparing the sauce and pasta. We know you’ll love this recipe, so share the love and leave a comment and rating below letting us know what you think.

Nduja, pronounced en-doo-yah, is a spicy spreadable salami from Calabria, in southern Italy. It’s made with Calabrian peperoncini chilli pepper paste (which is pretty spicy!) that is mixed with a blend of pork meat and fat. This ground mixture is then fermented and cured, making it safe to eat.

Nduja is often spread on bread and served with cheese and can be made into lovely pasta dishes like this one! Varieties can vary depending on where it is from, some are a lot spicier than others.

This nduja pasta is awesome and you need to make it for these reasons:

Easy - the recipe is very easy to follow, it’s made up of two parts. A quick nduja pasta sauce and the roasted cauliflower. These are then tossed with pasta and voilá! It’s that simple. Just be sure to follow the recipe/tips to ensure you get the most flavor out of it.

Delicious - nduja has a high fat content and we create a sauce by combining it with butter which gets speckled with capers, garlic and parmesan. It's full of flavor - you’ll be licking your lips it’s that good!

Romantic - whether you're single or in a relationship, there's just something romantic about a bowl of spicy pasta. You can easily enjoy this for a Valentine’s/Galentine’s meal.

Customizable - this pasta is easily customizable, allowing you to switch things up based on availability of ingredients.

Cauliflower - this nduja pasta recipe uses a small head of cauliflower as the dish is designed for two people, but it is easily scaleable to make more. Cauliflower makes a great base to build flavor on and works perfectly with the nduja.

Spices - you’ll need some ground smoked paprika and cumin for roasting the cauliflower; these spices add another level of depth to the dish.

Pasta - in the photos we have used spirallotti, but you can use whichever pasta you prefer. We have enjoyed this dish with bucatini also.

Nduja - finally, the most important and essential ingredient, nduja. You can easily buy nduja online. We like to get ours from a British producer. Whatever you get, just make sure it's nduja, the spicier the better in our opinion!

1. Toss small caulifower florets with the oil, smoked paprika, cumin, salt and pepper.
2. Roast the cauliflower on a parchment lined baking sheet at 200^oC/400^oF for 25-30 minutes until tender and lightly charred on the edges.
3. In a large skillet, warm the butter over a low heat. Add the sliced garlic and mini capers and cook gently for 1-2 minutes without browning the garlic. Add the nduja and grated parmesan and melt it into the sauce. At this stage you can add a couple of tablespoons of water to thin the sauce.
4. Add the cooked and drained pasta and roasted cauliflower into the sauce and toss together to coat everything evenly. Use ¼ -½ cup of reserved pasta cooking water to loosen the sauce and ensure a glossy pasta dish. Serve the nduja pasta immediately with any additional grated parmesan and finely chopped parsley if desired.

Seasoning - pasta absorbs a lot of flavor and it needs to be seasoned properly. This is done in layers: the sauce is seasoned, the pasta water is seasoned (flavoring the pasta itself) and the roasted cauliflower is seasoned too. It all comes together to make a very tasty pasta dish. There's nothing worse than a bland and boring pasta dish!

Make ahead - for this nduja pasta recipe you can actually make part of it ahead of time. You can roast the cauliflower and store it in the fridge in an air tight container for a day or two ready for you to stir into your pasta dish if you want to make it even quicker.

Pasta doneness - be sure to cook your pasta 'al dente', meaning 'to the tooth' as it needs to have some bite to it. It will continue cooking in the finishing of the sauce and when tossing it all together.

Some suggestions to get you inspired when customizing this nduja pasta recipe:

Sauce mix-ins - you can change these up if you wish. We would always keep the garlic in but you could use roughly chopped green olives or the large caper berries instead of the mini capers.

Cheese - if you don’t have parmesan you can use pecorino, or even just some finely grated cheddar, just be aware of how each cheese varies in saltiness and flavor.

Pasta - nduja is eaten most often with short pasta like spirelli, penne or fusilli. Traditionally, it is eaten with Fileja pasta in Calabria, a durum wheat pasta wrapped around a thin rod making a rolled tube when removed. Use what you enjoy or have available. We've also used gemelli pasta like in this lemon zucchini pasta.