Avocado Pasta

Ingredients

• 8 oz (225 g) pasta of your choice
• 2 ripe avocados
• ½ cup fresh basil leaves
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Optional: red pepper flakes for heat

Instructions

1. 1

   Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente. Before draining, reserve about ½ cup of pasta water.

2. 2

   While the pasta cooks, blend the avocados, basil, olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice until completely smooth.

3. 3

   If the sauce is too thick, stir in the reserved pasta water one tablespoon at a time until it reaches a glossy, coating consistency.

4. 4

   Drain the pasta and toss immediately with the sauce until every strand is coated. Season generously with salt and black pepper.

5. 5

   Serve right away, topped with extra basil, a drizzle of olive oil, and red pepper flakes if you like heat.

How Avocado Pasta Took Finland by Storm

In August 2012, Finnish chef Alexander Gullichsen and food writer Hanna Gullichsen published Safkaa. Parempaa arkiruokaa (Chow: Better Weekday Food), a cookbook that included the avocado pasta Alexander first made for Hanna on their first date. Within weeks of publication, Finnish food blogs were already calling it the recipe everyone was talking about. Demand was so intense that stores in Helsinki ran out of avocados and pecorino cheese; the department store Stockmann reportedly set up a dedicated table stocked with all the ingredients needed to make it. The dish spread well beyond Finland's borders and is still remembered across the Nordic region as a watershed moment — proof that a single recipe, shared at the right time, can reshape a country's grocery habits overnight.

Discover Avocado Pasta

Yotam Ottolenghi

Yotam Ottolenghi has pushed avocado well beyond the brunch plate in Ottolenghi Simple (Ebury Press, 2018). In one recipe he blends avocado with butter to create a compound fat — seasoned with lime and herbs, spread on garlic-rubbed toast, and finished with a capered tomato salsa — treating the fruit as an emulsified base rather than something to be mashed. In another, he pairs it with soba noodles, cardamom seeds, and crushed pistachios, a combination that demonstrates his core belief: avocado's mildness is a canvas, not a limitation.