Crab, lemon and chilli linguine recipe

A fresh, light pasta with a simple seafood sauce that's ready in the time it takes to cook the linguine.

The sauce for crab, lemon and chilli linguine only has five ingredients and the crab meat comes from tins, which means you can pretty much everything you need on hand and ready to go from your store cupboard. It's one of our simplest and quickest low calorie pasta recipes. The sauce is light and fresh - perfect for sunny weekend lunches or evening meals as the days get lighter. The lemon brings a real zest and vim to the dish, and brightens it up. Linguine is quite like spaghetti but rather than each strand being a perfect circle, they are flattened into an oval. This shape is popular with smooth light sauces like tomato, seafood and pesto because the sauces can really coat all of the strands of pasta.

Ingredients

• 350g linguine
• 2x170g tins crab meat in brine
• 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Cook the linguine in plenty of salted boiling water, until 'al dente' (before it gets soft). Drain and return to the pan.
2. Meanwhile, tip the crab, with its brine, into a bowl. Stir in the remaining ingredients and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
3. Stir the crab mixture into the drained pasta and return to a low heat, stirring gently, until most of the liquid has been absorbed by the pasta. Serve immediately.

Top tips for making crab, lemon and chilli linguine

This dish can also be made using tuna tinned in olive oil. Get the best tinned tuna you can afford - it really will make a difference to the end dish because it's so lightly cooked. And don't drain the fish, as the oil makes for a tastier sauce.

You might also like…

• 600 calorie meals
• Low calorie meals
• Healthy pasta recipes