Name: Smoked Salmon and Lemon Pasta
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 12 ounces (350 g) fettuccine or other long pasta; 3 ounces (85 g) chilled salted butter cut into 6 pieces; 1 cup heavy (thickened ) cream; 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest; 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice; 1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese; fresh ground pepper to taste; 1 bunch chives cut into 1 inch (2 1/2 cm) pieces; 9 ounces (250 grams) smoked salmon cut into small pieces; 1 cup reserved pasta cooking water

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Smoked salmon and lemon pasta is rich and ever so tasty. The luxurious cream, butter, parmesan and lemon sauce bathes the pasta with just enough coating, not swimming, just bathing! Coupled with a generous amount of smoked salmon and plenty of chives all finished off with freshly ground black pepper. Perfect!

We love to serve this smoked salmon and lemon pasta when the weather is just turning from autumn into winter. Itʼs comfort food, delicious and whilst not a recipe for every week definitely one to make for ease and something about smoked salmon says rich and luxurious.

smoked salmon and lemon pasta ingredients ready to prep — Ingredients

smoked salmon and lemon pasta with chives on wooden chopping board with silver knife — chives

smoked salmon and lemon pasta with parmesan cheese grated on a wooden chopping board with microplane grater — parmesan finely grated

smoked salmon and lemon pasta — Smoked salmon ready to add

The sauce

Technically the sauce is a part French based sauce beurre monte, with the addition of lemon juice and parmesan is super easy to make. Adding the butter piece by piece allows the sauce to emulsify and adding a tablespoon at a time is the way to success.

smoked salmon and lemon pasta cream in a white frying pan with lemon zest in the centre — cream and zest

smoked salmon and lemon pasta adding grated parmesan to cream sauce in white frying pan — parmesan added

Salmon

Look for salmon ‘offcutsʼ or ‘trimmingsʼ which are invariably sold for a third of the price of premium sliced salmon. Salmon offcuts are what we used to make this smoked salmon and lemon pasta, and because the cost is so cheap for a luxury fish we can afford to be extremely generous in the amount of salmon used.

Chives

Don’t leave out the chives. They bring a lot of flavour to the smoked salmon and lemon pasta sauce with their delicate onion flavour

Check out some more great pasta recipes

prawn, pesto and chargrilled capsicum pasta

chorizo & prawn pasta – quick spicy

easy chilli crab linguine

oxtail ragu – gluten free

cauliflower pasta bake with mushrooms and bacon

What’s your favourite pasta recipe?