Pasta dish recipes can be very easy to turn unhealthy. Adding an exorbitant amount of meat or cheese. A cream sauce. Canned ravioli. A cheap jar of sauce with high fructose corn syrup in it. Pasta recipes can toe the line between healthy and delicious, bad for you and delicious, and then just plain bad. The best part about healthy pasta dishes, though, is that their pasta recipes are usually the simpler and easier ones to make, as well as being cheaper in terms of ingredients.

My all time favorite pasta recipe is so simple, humble and rustic, that anyone can do it, and I challenge you to find anyone who will not like it. You may have all of the ingredients in your cabinets right now.

You will need the following ingredients.
Freshly boiled spaghetti.
A handful of garlic cloves. Either chopped or simply crushed.
Olive oil.
Red pepper flakes.
Fresh flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped.

Boil your pasta first, adding a generous pinch of salt to the water after it begins to boil, but before you add the pasta. Once you put it into the colander, do not oil it yet. Take out the amount that you will be using for the dish, then oil the rest of it and refrigerate.

Just before the pasta is ready to drain, cover the bottom of a non stick pan with olive oil, bringing it to a medium high heat. When it is hot enough, throw in your garlic. You do not want brown the garlic, just caramelize it enough that you lose that raw garlic taste and flavor the oil. Make sure you have enough oil to coat the pasta when you add it.

Before the pasta goes in, throw in your red pepper flakes. Put in as little or as much as you want. Obviously the more in there the hotter the dish will be. Once they sizzle and fry for about 30 seconds, adding even more flavor to the oil, add in your spaghetti.

Make sure there is no excess water on the pasta! Super important! You do not want to introduce water into incredibly hot oil. Once the pasta is in, toss it so it gets coated in the garlicy, peppery oil. Let it heat through for a little bit, only 30 seconds to a minute tops, and then dump into a big pasta bowl. Toss on your parsley and you are done.

Personally, I put tons of red pepper flakes and crushed garlic in there, because I love those flavors. And, believe it or not, if you eat enough of both garlic and red pepper flakes, they can help to keep mosquitoes away, because you will taste like them.

Garlic is healthy. Pasta, not in excess, is healthy. Olive oil, parsley and red pepper flakes are all healthy. You cannot get any healthier than this incredibly simple, super delicious recipe for your next pasta dish.