🍝 Mentaiko pasta
Mentaiko pasta is a Japanese-style spaghetti tossed with mentaiko — salted, chili-marinated pollock or cod roe — plus butter and a little cream. The tiny eggs coat the noodles in a pale pink, creamy, gently spicy sauce with a briny pop. It is finished with shredded nori and fresh shiso leaves and eaten straight away while warm.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 200 g spaghetti
- 80 g mentaiko (1–2 sacs)
- 20 g butter, softened
- 3 tbsp cream
- 1 sheet nori, cut into thin strips
- 4 shiso leaves, finely shredded
- Salt
Method
- Cook the spaghetti in salted water until al dente.
- Slit the mentaiko sacs and scrape the roe into a large bowl; mix with the butter and cream.
- Drain the pasta, keeping a few spoons of cooking water.
- Toss the hot spaghetti in the bowl with the mentaiko sauce, loosening with a little pasta water.
- Serve topped with nori and shiso.
How to make it lighter
- Halve the butter — 10 g of butter is about 75 kcal — and use pasta water for creaminess.
- Serve a smaller portion of pasta with a side salad.
- Go light on the cream; the roe itself makes the sauce rich.
History
Mentaiko pasta is a classic of yōshoku, the Western-influenced cooking of Japan. It is often credited to a Tokyo spaghetti restaurant in the 1960s known for combining Japanese ingredients with pasta. Today it is a standard on café menus and in convenience stores across Japan.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →