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When it comes to summer pasta recipes, there is no denying that tomatoes and basil tend to get all the love. It’s totally understandable — nothing beats the sweet, tangy, robust flavor of a ripe summer tomato, or the herbal punch of fresh basil — but there’s other seasonal produce that deserves a spot on your menu, too. We’re talking about sweet corn, of course! Corn on the cob might be a staple of summer barbecues and seafood boils, but it turns out there’s a lot more you can do to make this summer specialty shine. Leave it to Rachael Ray, the master of 30-Minute Meals and easy, flavorful recipes, to come up with a summer weeknight pasta recipe that puts sweet corn front and center.
One of our favorite things about cooking in the summer is that the ingredients really don’t need a lot of fancy technique to make their flavors sing. Ray’s corn pasta recipe uses four ears of corn, which get cut from the cob. But to really make sure she gets every last bit of summer sweet corn flavor into the recipe, she uses her knife to scrape what’s left on the cob, to extract all of the sweet corn juices.
The corn is gently sauteed in butter and olive oil along with sliced jalapeño peppers (remove the membranes and seeds to make them less spicy), sliced leeks, and chopped garlic. You just want to sweat the alliums, not cook them until they brown. The gentle heat will maximize the sweetness of the corn, without ruining its fresh flavor, and take out the pungency of the garlic and leeks.
To really maximize the corn flavor in this dish, Ray also uses corn-based penne rather than traditional wheat-based pasta. That also means this recipe becomes gluten-free. But if you don’t have access to corn pasta (you can pick some up on Amazon), you can use regular penne, or your favorite pasta shape, too.
Once the pasta is cooked, Ray tosses it with the corn mixture along with some pasta water. She adds lime juice for a fresh burst of acid, and crumbles ricotta salata cheese on top. Last but not least, fresh mint and parsley are tossed with the pasta and used as a garnish, so every bite is packed with flavor.
If you’re tired of tomato-based pasta and are looking for a way to use up your summer sweet corn, look no further than Rachael Ray’s easy weeknight Zesty Corn Pasta recipe.
In search of more summer recipes? Giada De Laurentiis has plenty:
Watch: How to Make Giada De Laurentiis’ Stuffed Lasagna Rolls
