Cavatelli With Brown Butter Beets, Ricotta and Pistachios Recipe (2024)

We make this at least once a month. Beautiful color and flavor. Preferred modifications to recipe:- Wash and rub olive oil on beets; then roast for 60 min at 400 degrees- Peel and blend beets- Add to brown butter in sauté pan per recipe, but don’t need to cook long- Season according to recipe- Skip ricotta and nuts

It’s not terrible, but not great either. Flavors are ok, but texture all wrong. Even w/lots of added pasta cooking water, not enough liquid to work as pasta sauce. W/so much butter and cheese, plus cooked grated (aka mushy) beets, the final dish is heavy and gloppy. Although ricotta topping tasted great on is own, it didn’t work w/beets and pasta; every single diner scraped it off. Concept of beet pasta sauce good but this isn’t the recipe. As a starter, to fix, I’d dice beets instead of grate.

Last night was our third time making this recipe and it doesn't cease to amaze: unique and delicious, and so visually arresting. The only thing we regret doing last night was grating the beets finely--would probably do medium next time so they would be sturdier. Made homemade ricotta and about half of the called amount which was perfect (in the past, there's been way too much leftover). Love this dish and it's always a hit!

This evening I gave the dish an Eastern European turn: instead of ricotta, I grated horse radish into some Greek yoghurt. (Creme fraiche might have been even better.) Also, I used lemon instead of balsamico. Served dill to sprinkle on top of the dish. Salad with celery and garlic- lemon dressing as a side. Also very tasty!

I don't usually comment but this is such a wonderful dish - not hard to make, absolutely delicious and beautiful too. I've been making it for years and am surprised at the few commenters. Everybody should be making this - even people who don't like beets. I don't change a thing. The only difference from the first time I made it is that I now own a food processor and that makes grating the beets a lot easier and much less messy. Try it. You'll be glad you did.

It's amazing how wonderful this recipe is all around - taste, smell, look, feel - I'm curious what inspired Melissa Clark to come up with it. I try to wear disposable food service gloves to keep my hands from staining. I cut the beets into small pieces before putting them in my tiny Cuisinart chop/grind food processor until they're the consistency of grated beets. I can't imagine doing anything differently than what's called for. Every ingredient and step come together to make this a classic!

I followed the recommendation to roast and blend the beets, which gave me a sauce with a creamy consistency. Next time, I would leave out the sage in the ricotta and top with chives instead of pistachio.

probably would skip the ricotta next time, overall very nice

Made almost exactly as directed! Instead of grating the beets in the food processor, we did a fine dice (about a quarter inch). And, we didn’t have quite enough beets so added in an onion—can’t imagine this without the onion. Toast the pistachios and enjoy the orange zest in the ricotta!

Blended roasted beets that were languishing in my fridge with a good amount of garlic, then added to browned butter (I used dried sage leaves from the CSA that I crushed up). Delicious as is and could easily be made in olive oil for vegan friends.

Made this with golden beets. It was delicious! Didn’t have any sage but lemon juice and pepper did the trick. Next time I’ll add a tiny clove of grated garlic to the ricotta.

Turned the leftovers into delicious pasta salad. Added chopped onions, celery, parsley, chopped dried black olives, sherry vinegar, lemon juice, Tabasco, Dijon, olive oil, and lots of black pepper. Very happy!

It’s not terrible, but not great either. Flavors are ok, but texture all wrong. Even w/lots of added pasta cooking water, not enough liquid to work as pasta sauce. W/so much butter and cheese, plus cooked grated (aka mushy) beets, the final dish is heavy and gloppy. Although ricotta topping tasted great on is own, it didn’t work w/beets and pasta; every single diner scraped it off. Concept of beet pasta sauce good but this isn’t the recipe. As a starter, to fix, I’d dice beets instead of grate.

This was fabulous-- I used pre-cooked beets and just julienned them, but it was still great!

Very tasty and unique dish. Love the addition of the ricotta. Only thing I will do differently next time is saute the beets in less butter.

We make this at least once a month. Beautiful color and flavor. Preferred modifications to recipe:- Wash and rub olive oil on beets; then roast for 60 min at 400 degrees- Peel and blend beets- Add to brown butter in sauté pan per recipe, but don’t need to cook long- Season according to recipe- Skip ricotta and nuts

Has anyone tried prepping the beets ahead of time? Does this work or would it mess up the recipe?

Highly recommend replacing sage with fresh basil- Cooked both versions each with a delicious outcome!