In a hurry? Ridiculously easy, with a delicious creamy lemon sauce, this simple Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraiche Pasta dish is for you!

Smoked salmon creme fraiche pasta, sprinkled with chopped parsley, on white plates next to slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley.

This delicious pasta dish is supremely simple and quick to put together. Cooking anything at the end of a day's work is challenging. After doing battle with London public transport, this is one of the very few dishes I am happy to cook from scratch in the evening.

Something with Bread, Something on Toast or Something out of a Tin are my usual go-to quick and easy meals. To be honest, my favourite evening meal when I used to work really long hours was muesli drowned in lots of cold milk. Any why not? Quick, easy, delicious and healthy - it's the perfect supper! So the bar is set high for a simple dish...

No problem. The most challenging step of this recipe is probably slicing the lemon and squeezing out the juice. Otherwise, this is one of those chuck in the pan and mix the ingredients type of recipes. The result, pasta lightly coated with a slightly sharp, creamy lemon sauce combined with intense bursts of flavour from the lemon sprinkled smoked salmon.

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🧾 Ingredients
🔪 How to make this recipe
More Easy Pasta Recipes
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🧾 Ingredients

Salt, lemon, pepper, packet of fusilli pasta, packet of smoked salmon ribbons and tub of creme fraiche on wooden sideboard.

pasta (I used fusili pasta)
fresh lemon juice
crème fraiche
smoked salmon
salt and pepper

See the Recipe Card below for quantities.

🔪 How to make this recipe

Water boiling in a saucepan with lid on.

Step 1. Boil the water.

Step 2. Add the pasta to the boiling water.

Smoked salmon cut into thin ribbons on wooden board.

Step 3. While the pasta is cooking, cut the smoked salmon into thin strips. Keep the salmon strips to one side ready for adding to the cooked pasta.

Smoked salmon and creme fraiche in a saucepan.

Step 4. Put the crème fraiche and lemon juice into the small saucepan. Heat gently. The mixture only needs to be warmed, as it just needs to be hot enough so that it does not cool the pasta when added to it. Take care not to boil the crème fraiche mixture.

Creme fraiche mixture in a saucepan, ladle of pasta water being held over mixture.

Step 5. Add a ladleful of the pasta cooking water to the crème fraiche mixture.

Step 6. Drain the pasta and put the drained pasta back into the saucepan that it has been cooked in.

Cooked fusilli pasta in a saucepan with ladle of creme fraiche mixture being poured onto pasta.

Step 7. Pour crème fraiche mixture onto cooked pasta and stir in thoroughly.

Step 8. Put the pasta onto serving plates and scatter a few of the smoked salmon ribbon strips onto each serving of pasta.

More Easy Pasta Recipes

Another truly easy pasta dish using fusilli is this Garlic Butter Pasta, with a rich buttery sauce infused with gently sautéed crushed garlic.

This Penne Napoli (pasta with tomato and basil sauce) is another super quick pasta dish. It has an amazingly rich tomato sauce, using just canned tomatoes and generous amounts of olive oil.

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