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Seasoned with soy sauce and flavorful dashi broth, this Japanese-style Pasta with Shrimp and Asparagus is incredibly delicious and ready in less than 30 minutes! It’s also gluten-free!
Spring is in the air! Say goodbye to hot pot and stews, and let’s welcome bright and light dishes with spring vegetables!
Today I’m going to share a super quick and easy Japanese Pasta with Shrimp and Asparagus (海老とアスパラガス簡単和風パスタ).
What’s Japanese Pasta?
You might have heard of the word Wafu Pasta (和風パスタ) while you were visiting Japan. Wafu Pasta refers to Japanese-style Pasta.
Wafu (和風) means Japanese-style and we often use this word to describe something that’s Japanese-style. In cooking, it can be the use of Japanese flavor profiles and ingredients. You might have heard of Wafu Dressing (Japanese-style salad dressing) or Wafu Hambagu (Japanese style hamburger steak).
In today’s recipe, we’re making a western-style pasta into Japanese style flavors.
Watch How To Make Japanese Pasta with Shrimp and Asparagus
Click here to watch on YouTube
3 Tips to Make This Recipe
1. Pick good asparagus.
Asparagus is very sweet and delicious when it’s in season! You should look for firm and crisp stalks with tightly closed budding tips. There are different sizes of asparagus, and for this recipe, I think it’s best to pick thin to medium-width stalks so that they don’t require cooking for a long time.
2. Cook stalks and spears separately.
The texture of the food is important, especially when you want to fully enjoy seasonal fresh vegetables. You don’t want to get mushy wilted asparagus!
In cooking, little extra steps help and improve the final dish. Please remember to cook stalks first because they take a longer time to cook than spears.
3. Cook pasta till al dente in the frying pan.
Don’t cook your pasta until al dente when you are boiling pasta in the pot, as you will need to toss the pasta with ingredients and seasonings in the frying pan. You don’t want to end up with overcooked pasta. Purposely undercook the pasta for this dish.
Make this Japanese Pasta Gluten-Free
Gluten-Free Soy Sauce
Soy sauce is traditionally brewed from water, wheat, soybeans, and salt. If you are gluten intolerant, you won’t be able to use soy sauce in cooking unless it’s tamari soy sauce (100% wheat-free ones) or gluten-free soy sauce.
Kikkoman offers 3 varieties of gluten-free soy sauce. For this recipe, I used the regular gluten-free soy sauce (blue label) which tastes just like regular soy sauce.
Gluten-Free Pasta
I’ve tried several brands of gluten-free pasta and by far Garofalo’s Gluten-Free Spaghetti and Linguine are the BEST pasta that I’ve tasted.
The texture and flavors are just like regular pasta. Mr. JOC and the kids didn’t notice that this was a gluten-free dish until I mentioned it. So if you have a family member or friend who is allergic to gluten, you can all still enjoy the same meal with this pasta!
Use Other Spring Vegetables
There are so many wonderful spring vegetables that you can incorporate into this dish in case you don’t like asparagus. Here are my choices of spring vegetables that would go well with this dish.
- Artichokes
- Belgian endive
- Butter lettuce
- Cabbage (in Japan, we have “spring cabbage” 春キャベツ)
- Collard greens
- Fava beans
- Fennel
- Green beans
- Mustard greens
- Peas
- Snow peas
- spinach
- Swiss chard
- Watercress
The Amount of Chili Peppers
Mr. JOC and I love adding 1-2 dried red chili peppers (without seeds) in this pasta. I’d chop into smaller pieces and cook with olive oil and garlic to infuse the flavor. However, my children think it’s a bit too spicy, even with one red chili pepper.
If you have children, another option is to sprinkle crushed chili peppers over pasta at the table. As the chili peppers are not infused into the oil, you would need more chili flakes to enjoy the kick, but it works.
If you love spicy food, I highly recommend cooking with chili peppers. I hope you enjoy this recipe with your family and friends!
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want to look for substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.
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Seasoned with soy sauce and flavorful dashi broth, this Japanese-style Pasta with Shrimp and Asparagus is incredibly delicious and ready in less than 30 minutes! It’s also gluten-free!
- ¼ red onion (2.5 oz, 70 g)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 6 oz asparagus (6 oz, 170 g)
- 10 large prawn (peeled and deveined; 9 oz, 260 g)
- kosher/sea salt (I use Diamond Crystal; Use half for table salt)
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 ½-2 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1-2 dried red chili pepper (seeds removed; optional)
- ¼-⅓ cup dashi (Japanese soup stock; click to learn more) (60-80 ml)
- 1 Tbsp gluten free soy sauce
- crushed red peppers (red pepper flakes) (optional)
- 8 oz gluten free pasta (4 oz or 113 g per person; I used linguini)
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Gather all the ingredients and bring a big pot of water to boil.
- Meanwhile cut red onion and garlic cloves into thin slices.
- Cut asparagus diagonally and separate spears and stalks, we will sauté asparagus stalks first as they take longer to cook.
- Sprinkle kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper on prawn. If your prawn is not peeled or deveined, you can check my tutorial for instructions.
- Once the pasta water is boiling, for 4QT (16 cups or 3.8L) add 2 Tbsp salt. As we will cook the pasta a little longer after draining, cook it 1 minute less than the directions on the package.
- Heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When it’s hot, add prawn and cook until the bottom side is nicely browned, about 2-3 minutes. Don’t touch the shrimp until it releases itself from the skillet. Once it has nice char on one side, you can easily flip.
- When the one side of the shrimp is nicely browned, flip and cook the other side for 2-3 minutes. Once the shrimp are nicely golden brown, transfer to a plate and set aside.
- Lower the heat to medium low, add the butter and swirl around.
- Add the red onion and garlic slices and sauté for 1 minute. If you like spicy pasta, add chili pepper now. Increase the heat to medium and add the stalks of asparagus. Sauté for about 3 minutes, until asparagus stalks become tender.
- Then add the spears of asparagus and cook for another 1-2 minutes, until the asparagus are tender but still nice and crisp.
- Add the prawn back in to the skillet and increase the heat to medium high heat. Add dashi.
- Add gluten free soy sauce and adjust based on your preference.
- Add the cooked pasta and toss to combine with the ingredients. If you like, sprinkle freshly ground black pepper. Serve immediately. Optionally, you can garnish with chili pepper flake.
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
Other Gluten-Free Recipes on Just One Cookbook
- Gluten-Free Tempura
- Gluten-Free Karaage
- Gluten-Free Baked Chicken Katsu
- Check out more Gluten-Free Recipes!
Hey Nami, greetings from germany your recipe is great, love the combination of asparagus and prawn. I have a littel question, what is the brand of your flatware shown in the picture?
Hi Kevin! It’s Cutipol (http://www.cutipol.pt/index.php). I love their simple yet beautiful design. 🙂
Simple, versatile and healthy recipe, Nami! I had a salmon fillet that I had already planned to cook for dinner and decided to substitute it for the shrimp and the pasta turned out great. Looking forward to trying it next with shrimp. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Janice! Thank you so much! So glad you tried it with salmon! Sounds really good! I love the salmon in my pasta too. Thank you for your kind feedback! 🙂
Hi Nami – This recipe was delicious! So simple yet so tasty. I love Wafu recipes – they remind me so much of the cafes in Japan. Thank you for posting this awesome recipe – my family and I really enjoyed it.
Hi Anita! I’m so happy to hear you and your family enjoyed this recipe! Thank you for your kind feedback! 🙂
Hi Nami, What do you recommend as substitute for shrimp given the taste combination of asparagus and seasoning? Should i go vegetarian completely since meat may make the dish too heavy? Additionally, how would you cut Belgian Endive and for how long to cook it in the heat? Thank you so much in advance for advice.
Hi Nana! If there is no dietary restriction, I think bacon, chicken, and mushrooms would work perfectly. If you don’t want it to be “heavy” then don’t add too much, just enough to boost the flavor. You don’t want just plain carbs. 🙂
Belgian endive – assuming you’re talking about for a different dish?? Now, don’t separate them. Depending on its size, cut in half or quarter (wedges). So the core will hold each piece. They can be enjoyed raw, so just cook for 2-3 mins. I love crisp texture, but depending on the dish you’re creating, maybe more toward 3 mins so it’s not as crisp and balance out with other food texture. Hope that helps a little….
Hi there what to do with the dashi?
Hi M! Do you mean what to do with the leftover? You can keep it for a week in the fridge. A lot of Japanese recipes require dashi in the recipe so you can use it. When I don’t have other recipes to use, I always use up for miso soup since I always serve miso soup to accompany Japanese food and steamed rice. 🙂
Great recipe. We ate it last night. I did substitute Somen noodles for Pasta. Like those & Udon noodles a lot. I would ask you to use more metric weight measurements than volume.
Hi Tom! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! Ohh somen! Nice swap! My son loves somen very much, he would definitely like this recipe with somen. 🙂
P.S. I include a metric system in parenthesis (except for the recipes from 5-7 years ago, which I haven’t updated).
Hi Nami, what skillet and size did you use for this dish? Thanks!
Hi Wendy! This is what I have: https://amzn.to/2mobi4e. 🙂
Absolute FAVORITE!!! The Japanese Dashi really brought out the flavor and made this outstanding. Fresh, spicy with the chili flakes and with a deep depth from the asparagus and shrimp. Such a wonderful recipe! ご馳走様!
Hi Don! Thank you so much for trying this recipe! I’m so happy to hear you enjoyed it as much as we did! Thanks for your kind feedback. 🙂 xo
That’s a yummy and quick meal.
Thank you, Elaine! xo
Made this tonight with spaghetti noodles and scallops! Turned out amazing and I know I crushed it when my bfs eyes rolled back. Only took 30 minutes to prepare too! I’m definitely remembering this one for quick dinner nights when I get home late! Thanks so much.
Hi Bnz! Thank you so much for trying this recipe with scallops! YUM!!! I’m happy you and your BF enjoyed this recipe and thank you for writing the kind feedback. xo
Looks delectable! Will definitely make this for dinner tomorrow! I haven’t yet tried a recipe from JOC that wasn’t delicious!
Hi Faith! Hope you enjoy the recipe! 🙂 Thank you for your kind words. xo
Also tried your teriyaki chicken wings yesterday- so gooey and tasty! I unfortunately let it get a bit burnt… next time I need to keep a closer watch on it! But will definitely make it for friends coming over soon!
Sorry about the little burn on the chicken. Yes, when you put it in the oven, keep an eye on it. 🙂 Each oven is different and sometimes it’s closer to the heat source. 🙂
Hi Faith! I’m so happy to hear you enjoy my recipes and thank you for your kind words!
LOL I’ve been buying ingredients Tons of them, the the only thing here I have is Spinach. My local grocery store does not stock any of these ingredients. I’m lucky to find a Japanese Cucumber here. I want to do some of these recipes, but have to try to find the equivalence and it’s not easy. Buying these things online is not only expensive, but will be wilted before it gets here.
Hi Luke! Dashi is probably the only one that’s kind of unique to Japanese ingredients in this recipe as the rest of ingredients can be purchased in the American grocery stores (I’m not sure where you’re from). You can replace dashi with pasta water if you like, but it’s a big part of Japanese style pasta sauce. 🙂
Yes, you hit the nail on the head, Nami. There is no harm at all in a family occasionally eating one meal together that accommodates one person’s food allergy. Surely in a family that deals with this there will be plenty of other meals where the person with the allergy has a separate meal prepared, or part of the meal is made separately. That is so much hard work for a parent, and can make the family member with the allergy feel like a burden. It is definitely psychologically healthy to enjoy something together as a family where everyone eats the same meal, even if it’s just on occasion. I’m sure there are many people grateful to see recipes like this one. I am not vegan but I have friends who are and whenever I cook for them I’m happy to make a vegan meal and enjoy the same meal together with them, even though my primary diet is not vegan and that diet would not be healthy for me.
I certainly see the original commentor’s point. It’s important to listen to experts about the reality behind diet fads, but the most important thing is personal responsibility for our own nutritional choices. I’m making this recipe tonight and I’m not using any gluten-free pasta or soy sauce because making the substitution is easy and obvious for me, but for people who have to eat gluten-free, being able to do a web search for gluten-free recipes and find ones like this is probably a real help. Easier than getting halfway through a “normal” recipe and realizing some ingredients that have gluten are crucial and cannot be substituted. From the point of view of a food blogger, this recipe is categorized and presented well.
おいしいです！
I really enjoyed this recipe. It is very versatile with the toppings.
For the first time, I made it just as your recipe says. I love the selection of asparagus, onions, and shrimp together. It’s a nice pairing. I tried mine with a little shichimi togarashi rather than crushed chili pepper since I had some handy.
The second time I made it I tried adding some mushrooms and topping it with katsuobushi. Mmmmmmmm. There are so many things you can do, and it’s fairly easy to make! My best tip for experienced home cooks is to cook the other ingredients while the noodles are boiling so you don’t have to wait as long. This will save cooking time, but for beginners, it’s probably better to start with your noodles cooked so you don’t interrupt the cooking of the other ingredients.
Hi Lion! よかった、ありがとう！ Yes, it’s pretty versatile, and when Japanese do wafu pasta, it’s a similar guideline – with different ingredients and toppings (like katsuobushi etc). I actually recommend cooking the ingredients first instead of pasta. Pasta will get overcooked with remaining heat (we do not pour cold water to stop cooking pasta) while waiting for the other ingredients to finish. Also unless you drizzle some olive oil, it will stick to each other… so it’s “easier” if you focus on the ingredients first, and set aside, and wait for the pasta to finish… I had cooked pasta first in the past and pasta was left in a sieve and it became half dome “sieve” shape by the time I add to the ingredients to toss together. LOL.
This looks awesome and I would like to make it but don’t have time to make dashi. Can I use store bought dashi? What kind and what brand? Thank you! 🙂
Hi Amanda! Can you get powdered dashi or packet dashi?
powder: https://www.justonecookbook.com/dashi-powder/
packet: https://www.justonecookbook.com/dashi-packet/
I keep a small shaker of Korean gochugaro to use as a seasoning at the table. Ichimi is also a great thing to use atthetable.
Hi Bkhuna! I agree! 🙂
Easy and simple . Very useful for senior person.
Hi Mia! Thank you so much for your kind words. I hope you enjoy(ed) the recipe! 🙂
OMG Nami, this was SO tasty. Love all your recipes. We did this one pretty much as written, other than we added some oyster mushrooms (because we had them), cooked in a separate step and added back into the pan along with the shrimp. We went a little lighter on the pasta and just a bit heavier with the asparagus. Also added a dab of a butter-miso compound to each portion at the end. Not sure exactly what made this work so well but I suspect it’s the combination of soy sauce and butter. Will definitely make again.
Hi Ann! Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback. I’m glad you really enjoyed this recipe! 🙂