Sweet and savory flavors combined with the tomato and mango make for the perfect versatile sauce to eat atop vegetable noodles.
Have you ever wanted to try and level up your everyday tomato sauce and pasta recipe?
In this recipe we do just that, adding fruits to mask unripe flavors, turning vegetables into noodles, and boosting the flavor profile and the nutrient value of the meal at the same time.
Sweet and Savory Flavor Combinations
Mixing together sweet and savory foods can make for some of the most interesting and successful flavor combinations. In this recipe, we include a savory tomato sauce, combined with sweet mango to make an epic sauce for zucchini noodles.
Tomatoes have both savory and sweet flavors, and combining tomatoes with fruit is a simple way to create a delicious meal.
In this recipe, you’ll blend the tomatoes up with other ingredients to make an easy and delicious sauce. Be sure to pulse the ingredients together in your food processor or blender (as opposed to pureeing the ingredients) to ensure that the sauce has the right consistency and isn’t too watery.
Making Noodles from Vegetables
Since store-bought pasta is a yellow light food and should be consumed on occasion, this recipe offers you a pasta dish made of entirely green light foods!
The easiest way to make vegetable-based noodles is to use a spiralizer – a genius invention that turns vegetables into long noodles that resemble pasta! Easy right? A spiralizer is a simple and inexpensive tool, but is also not mandatory.
You can also make vegetable noodles using a stand-up cheese grater, a standard vegetable peeler, or just a sharp kitchen knife, so long as you have a bit of patience.
Using a spiralizer is faster and easier, but using another kitchen tool will get the job done without adding too much prep time. Don’t worry too much about achieving even cuts – just do your best to make sure that the noodles are as thin as possible, about ⅛’ thick.
There are a large variety of vegetables to choose from when making raw vegetable-based noodles. Zucchini or yellow squash work really well, sweet potatoes can be eaten raw, carrots, cucumbers, or beets.
How to Utilize Unripe Fruit in Sauces
This recipe is useful if you have store-bought tomatoes that aren’t sweet enough to eat on their own. The more ripe and in-season the tomatoes are, the sweeter they’ll be.
When combined together, the tomato and mango even combine to create a not-too-sweet sauce that you can use on top of many different types of dishes. This “hack” also works if the mangoes aren’t sweet enough to eat on their own as well.
You are welcome to use ripe tomatoes and mangoes for this recipe, of course, the sauce will be that much more epic!
Sauce Versatility
This sauce isn’t just for zucchini noodles. This sauce can be used on many different dishes, including lasagna, Buddha bowls, breakfast scrambles, pasta, and on top of toast.
This sauce will go great with store-bought pasta as well, but remember the goal is to find the pasta made with one ingredient: a legume or a whole grain!
One of the secrets to eating more plant-based whole foods is knowing how to add an extra level of flavor to dishes to help the ingredients unite. Sauces are an excellent way to do just that.
Who doesn’t love sauce?! The more sauce recipes that you keep in your back pocket, the more successful you will be eating plant-based whole foods. There are tons of recipes out there, and we’ll do our best to keep them coming!
All you have to do at this point is place your pasta atop a bed of greens and enjoy!
Photos by: @Mitras_meals
Zucchini Noodles with Mango Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 4 cup Zucchini Noodles
- 4 cup Red Tomatoes, chopped
- 1 cup Mango
- 5 Garlic Cloves
- 1 cup White Onion
- 1/2 cup Basil
- 1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Instructions
Directions
- Spiralize or shred zucchini with a mandolin slicer.
- Prepare the mango tomato sauce by blending tomato, mango, garlic cloves, white onion, basil, and black pepper. Add to the bowl.
- Slice the mushrooms.
- Arrange zucchini noodles and beans on a bed of greens.
- Toss gently to mix and combine flavors.
Notes
- No Zucchini: Use any other type of noodle that you enjoy, yellow squash, sweet potato, carrots, cucumber, beets, or even broccoli stems!