Easy Veggie Pasta Sauce

This easy and tasty veggie pasta sauce is loaded with 7 vegetables! Cooked down and pureed into a thick and delicious sauce that you will want to eat with a spoon. But it tastes great on any kind of pasta. This is a healthy family dinner everyone will love.

You might also like this easy and healthy roasted red pepper sauce.

I remember when my son was young that there was craze where you added hidden vegetables to foods so picky eaters were getting a nutritious meal but they didn’t realize it. Well had a bunch of vegetables in the fridge and some from my husbands garden and decided to make this easy veggie pasta sauce and I just loved it!

It was really easy, delicious and I felt good about it being loaded with nutritious vegetables. Plus it was a great way to use up some of that produce. You just cook everything down and them blend it into a thick and smooth sauce you can eat over regular pasta, or get the extra mile and eat it over spaghetti squash or zoodles. This is all done by sautéing on the stove and no roasting involved.

I even made some gluten free meatballs with hidden veggies which I will post next week. Below is what I ate this vegetable pasta sauce with which was spaghetti squash with the meatballs and the sauce recipe. Not saying you have to do this but I really enjoyed myself. And I got to add the 8th vegetable.

Recipe ingredients and substitutions.

The simple ingredients I used for this homemade sauce were yellow onion, fresh garlic, carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, celery, sweet bell peppers, crushed tomatoes, parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning, olive oil, salt and black pepper. Note I also use water to thin the sauce out. You can substitute with vegetable broth or chicken broth if you want.

• Canned Crushed Tomatoes – I’ve been using this as a base of my tomato sauces lately with good results. The sauce from this Italian sausage dish is something we love in our family and it’s so easy. You could use plain tomato sauce or jar marinara sauce if you don’t have it but try it with the crushed tomatoes if you can.
• Veggies – I feel like these are are necessary because they add different flavors. The carrots, celery and onion are a popular trio used to add depth of flavor to many dishes. I learned that bell peppers also go great in tomato sauce from our local Italian restaurant. And lastly the zucchini doesn’t add taste but is very neutral so easy to add. While the butternut squash adds a bit of natural sweetness and created thickness to the dish. Other veggies you can add are spinach, mushrooms, kale, cauliflower, etc.
• Seasoning – The seasoning is fresh garlic, salt and black pepper and Italian seasoning. I also added parmesan cheese as it’s something my Italian mother in law told me about. It definitely contributes to the sauce but if you don’t have it you could omit it. But it might not be as good. I would not substitute it with another cheese though. Nutritional yeast may work though if that is something you have used before.
• Other Options – I like to add red crushed pepper flakes because we like a little heat and spice with our Italian food. You can also add a bit of heavy cream to get a vodka sauce at the end if you like that flavor combination. And lastly you can add fresh herbs like basil, oregano or parsley if you want.

How to make veggie pasta sauce.

Get out all your vegetables and your food processor. I ended up grating the butternut squash and zucchini but used the food processor for the rest of the vegetables. You can finely dice everything by hand because it’s all going into a blender anyway if you want but this is quicker.

I love this small food processor for meal prep as it’s easy to store and clean.

Step 1: Add the onions, carrots, celery and peppers to a small food processor and pulse until finely chopped. You want to do the butternut and zucchini separately because you will add them later to the dish but the rest can be mixed up.

Step 2: Get out a stock pot and heat to medium high heat. Add the olive oil and heat up. Next add the onion mixture and saute for about 5 minutes until the mixture has softened.

Step 3: Next add the shredded zucchini and butternut squash and saute for a few more minutes.

Step 4: Now add the rest of the ingredients – the crushed tomatoes, crushed garlic, parmesan cheese, water (or even broth) and seasonings. Cover and cook until simmering. Continue to cook 25-30 minutes to let all the flavors meld together. 

Step 5: Take off the heat and let cool a few minutes then spoon into a high speed blender like a Vitamix and blend until smooth. You may have to do this in batches and be careful when blending hot liquids.

You could also use an immersion blender or even a food processor to blend everything but a high speed blender like the Vitamix works best.

Spoon or pasta noodles or use this veggie pasta sauce any way you want. It will be very thick. If you want it thinner you can use a bit more water or broth to thin it out. Just add everything back to the pan along with ¼-1/2 cup of water and mix until you get the texture you want.

If you want to add meatballs add all the sauce back to the pot and add your meatballs. Cook for about 5 minutes to get the meatballs incorporated with the sauce.

As you can see I like it pretty thick. It’s so flavorful you really could eat it with a spoon. It will hold up great with any pasta noddles with shape as the sauce will cling to the noodles well but you can eat it will any kind of pasta from spaghetti to rigatoni or cavatappi noodles that I love these days.

As I mentioned above I ate this with my gluten free meatballs with hidden vegetables (recipe soon) and spaghetti squash. That’s a vegetable packed dinner! But my husband it ate with regular pasta below.

And that is all there is to this healthy and delicious dinner recipe. Serve with a green salad and or crusty bread and you got yourself a complete meal.

Store leftovers of this vegetable pasta sauce in an airtight container or freeze if you want. Please scroll down to view the printable recipe card.

More healthy recipes using lots of vegetables.

Here are some of my favorite vegetable centric recipes that I think you will also love.

• warm quinoa with roasted vegetables
• grilled vegetables with garlic tahini sauce
• low carb creamy vegetables and ham casserole
• quick pickled vegetable salad
• red curry Thai butternut squash noodles
• low carb veggie breakfast biscuits
• veggie bolognese sauce or chili (see below) or quesadillas

Well this easy hidden veggie pasta sauce is a keeper for me. I think it will be a staple dish in our weeknight meal rotation even in the winter as it’s a great way to add healthy nutrients to one of our favorite family meals. I hope you like it as much as we do.