Creamy Salmon & Spinach Spaghetti
This is a 15-minute dinner that tastes like you spent an hour at the stove. Smoked salmon warms gently in a skillet with wilted spinach and scallions, then gets tossed with whole wheat spaghetti and a cottage cheese sauce that is creamy without the cream.
Forty-two grams of protein from salmon, cottage cheese, and grated cheese. Eleven grams of fiber from spinach and whole wheat. A squeeze of lemon and a shower of cheese to finish. The kind of bowl you make on a Tuesday and think about on a Wednesday.
Ingredients
- spaghetti, whole wheat 3 ounces
- scallion 1
- spinach 8 ounces
- smoked salmon 2 ounces
- olive oil 1 tablespoon
- cottage cheese, 4% milkfat 3 tablespoons
- lemon juice 1 squeeze
- grated cheese 1 ounce
Method
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Cook the spaghetti according to package directions.
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Finely chop the scallion and roughly chop the spinach. Cut the smoked salmon into strips.
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Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Sauté the scallion for about 1 minute. Add the spinach and cook until wilted. Gently stir in the salmon and warm for about 1 minute.
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Reserve 1 tablespoon of the pasta cooking water, then drain the spaghetti.
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Add the spaghetti and cottage cheese to the skillet along with the reserved pasta water. Toss until creamy and well combined.
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Add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste.
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Spoon into a bowl. Sprinkle with the cheese and garnish with fresh lemon zest.
Add half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard to the skillet with the cottage cheese. It disappears into the sauce but deepens the flavor, and the acidity helps the cottage cheese emulsify more smoothly with the pasta water.
Behind this recipe
Can I use fresh salmon instead of smoked?
You can, but the dish changes character. Smoked salmon has a concentrated, salty flavor that melts into the sauce without needing a hard sear. If you swap to fresh, cook a fillet separately, flake it in at the end, and add a pinch of extra salt to compensate. The protein content stays similar either way.
Is 59 grams of carbs too much if I'm trying to lose fat?
Probably not. A pooled analysis of 5,192 participants found that when total calories and protein were held constant, swapping between lower-carb and higher-carb diets changed daily fat loss by just 16 grams per day. The carb number matters far less than whether total calories and protein are where they need to be. This bowl delivers 42 grams of protein at 687 calories, which fits most moderate deficit targets.
Read the full evidence reviewWhy cottage cheese instead of cream or ricotta?
Cottage cheese melts into a creamy sauce when tossed with hot pasta and a splash of starchy cooking water. Compared to heavy cream, it adds meaningful protein at a fraction of the calories. Ricotta would work as a swap, though the texture lands slightly grainier. The cottage cheese disappears completely into the coating.
