This Is the One Surprising Ingredient Oprah Adds to Her Butter-Free Pasta to Make It Super Creamy

It’s time for some PASTAAAAAAA! Oprah’s favorite creamy lemon pasta with mushrooms and peas, to be specific. The television legend recently shared a video on Oprah Daily where she joined her chef, Philippe Chevalier, in making this staple of the Winfrey household.

The thing is, though, Oprah has a secret when it comes to this dish: there isn’t actually any cream in her creamy lemon pasta.

The Weight Watchers-investor revealed that while she loves creamy pasta, she wanted to make this as low-calorie as she could, using the least amount of Weight Watchers points possible.

Chef Chevalier revealed the big secret to making a deliciously creamy pasta for the legend without using dairy products — oatmeal! Or rather, the creamy, oaty liquid you get from cooking oatmeal. Shocked? Me, too! 

As Chef Chevalier shows in the video, he adds a bouillon cube to the water before cooking the oatmeal, then strains out the solids, reserving the starchy liquid to create the sensory feeling of creaminess without actually using butter or cream. He goes on to describe how he builds the rest of the dish, which comes together in just minutes.

Oprah is clearly smitten with this pasta, and honestly I think that the two of them might be onto something. I’m a big fan of oatmeal for almost any meal (like these Savory Miso Oats with Charred Scallions or this easy One Pan Oatmeal breakfast), and the idea of being able to repurpose some of that oat cooking liquid into another dish appeals to the Depression-era grandmother who lives deep inside me and abhors food waste.

I just might have to join Oprah in trying this creamy little secret switcheroo. Who knows, you may just find me waltzing out of the kitchen during my next dinner party — bowls of pasta in hand — calling out, “You get a bowl! And you get a bowl! EVERYONE GETS A BOWL OF PASTAAAAAA!”

You can get the full recipe for Oprah’s favorite Butter-Free Lemon Pasta here.