Veggie pasta bake | Jamie Oliver recipes (2024)

FAQs

What vegetables are good in pasta? ›

Fresh veggies: Zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, bell peppers, red onion, and grape tomatoes. Flavor-makers: Garlic, dried oregano, fresh thyme, salt, and pepper, and fresh lemon zest. Pasta: A short pasta is best for making sure everything is bite-sized.

Dried pasta needs to be par-boiled, then drained before using it in baked dishes. Just boil for half the time specified on the package. There is a type of dried no-boil lasagna sheets that don't require par-boiling, but they need extra water added to the sauce.

Pasta absorbs liquid from the sauce as it cooks. If there's too much pasta and not enough sauce, you can end up with a dry bake.

In order to keep pasta bake on the healthy side, I recommend using a tomato-based sauce. It's so easy and inexpensive to make your own, but if you're pushed for time, any shop-bought tomato-based pasta sauce will be fine.

A typical dinner at an Italian home is usually pasta, meat, and vegetables, and takes place around 8 p.m. Going out for dinner in Italy is a pretty big thing to do, or eat, for that matter: Several courses, wine, and a long time chatting and lingering are all part of the event.

Absolutely! Research shows that eating pasta is associated with higher intakes of total vegetables and red vegetables in particular – think tomatoes. One reason for this is that pasta is the perfect vehicle for adding healthier vegetables into your diet.

By skipping the separate boiling of the pasta and instead adding the dried noodles straight to the sauce, you can make a weeknight-friendly meal in just one pot. Bonus: It makes the pasta more flavorful, too.

Most baked pasta recipes instruct you to boil the noodles until cooked halfway before baking them. This allows the pasta to finish cooking in the oven as it bathes in the sauce.

PREHEAT oven to 425 degrees. COMBINE uncooked pasta, 1 jar of Sauce and 1 jar of water in a 13 x 9 inch baking pan. Cover with aluminum foil. BAKE 30 minutes.

Instead of supplementing the marinara with ricotta, as is typically the case, Perry nixes the fresh cheese. “Ricotta gets spongy and dry when baked,” she explains. To achieve that gooey-melty-oozy-and-saucy level of baked pasta perfection, make two sauces: a red sauce, and a white béchamel sauce.

What is the best pasta shape for pasta bake? ›

The extruded pasta may not seem like the most adventurous pasta shape but the beauty of it, is its ability to hold a sauce in its hollow tube. It's also a pasta that suits most dishes, ideal for a pasta bake or used as the base for a spaghetti bolognese – penne has it all.

Similar to Penne, Ziti is the type of pasta that has to be broken up, as it's produced long and hollow. The significant difference between Ziti and Penne, though, is the way the pasta is cut. While both pasta types boast a common tubular shape, Ziti is cut straight on, whereas Penne is diagonally cut.

Most pasta bake recipes require you to pre-boil your pasta until it's not quite cooked through and then finish it in the oven.

Remember that tomato paste is very concentrated and needs to be cooked with other ingredients to be palatable. Tomato sauce, on the other hand, has a thinner consistency and can be heated through and served as a sauce for pasta or used as an ingredient in other dishes.

Add some mix-ins

Now's the time to get really creative with your pasta. Add in some chopped olives or jarred tapenade, quartered artichoke hearts, or sun-dried tomatoes in oil, capers, sliced pickled chiles or roasted red peppers, drained canned tuna or other tinned seafood.

Add 1 stick of unsalted butter to cooked pasta; toss well to coat. Mix in 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese and season with salt and pepper. Garnish with more grated cheese and minced flat-leaf parsley.