Dairy-free Penne alla Vodka

This Dairy-Free Penna alla Vodka is a long time favorite!

Quick and easy to whip together, it is comfort food at its best!

You favorite gluten-free pasta tossed with a creamy and indulgent tasting sauce.  No one has to know it’s made without cream or butter…

So what gives it it’s creamy, silky texture? Would you believe silken tofu?

Yep, I said tofu.

But don’t get freaked out, no one would ever guess! The tofu is blended with the vodka, then mixed into a tomato sauce base, so it’s super rich and creamy.

Tastes indulgent and so yummy… My entire family loves it and trust me, unlike me, none of them are tofu fans.

And I would love to take credit of this idea but the recipe adapted by my family from a newspaper years ago. Before dairy-free cream sauces were popular.

So let’s make it!

Here’s what you’ll need: Olive oil, garlic, strained tomatoes (we use Pomi Strained Tomatoes – amazon affiliate link), tomato paste, crushed red pepper, dried basil, salt, silken tofu, gluten-free vodka and your favorite gluten-free pasta.

Here we used Barilla gluten-free penne. You can read about all our favorite gluten-free pastas here.

And while I am not an expert in gluten-free alcohol, as best I understand it, distilled alcohol like vodka is gluten-free because of the distillation process. But to be extract safe, you can use a vodka like Tito’s Handmade Vodka which is made from corn and certified gluten-free.  If you want to read more about gluten-free alcohol, I’m linking a great blog post about gluten-free alcohol by GF Jules.

And it comes together quickly.

All you do is make a simple sauce by sauteing garlic and mixing in the tomato paste and stained tomatoes and season with crushed red pepper, basil and salt.

Pro tip: this sauce can be as spicy or not spicy as you like. My husband and I like it with a full 1/2 teaspoon or more of crushed red pepper. The boys prefer it with 1/4 teaspoon or less, so start with a little and you can always add more. Just note that the tofu vodka cream will reduce the kick of the red pepper as it all cooks up.

While that simmers, you mix the silken tofu and vodka in blender.  We used our Nutri-bullet Blender – amazon affiliate link, which you know we love!

It leave you with a super creamy and silky mix which you add into the tomato base.

You can add as much or as little of the tofu vodka cream to the sauce, depending on how pink and creamy you want the sauce. So I always recommend starting with half of it, stirring and adding more.

Let it cook up and prepare your favorite pasta. Then mix together.

Hope you love it as much as we do!

For more easy pasta ideas, click here.

Scroll down to see the recipe.