Pasta bake is a recipe loved by many which you can serve up for lunch or dinner.
However, many people are put off by pasta bake recipes that seem difficult to make or are time-consuming.
Fortunately, food-lover Emilie Pullar of The Burnt Butter Table has shared her recipe for an “easy and insanely delicious” sausage pasta bake.
Although the dish takes one hour to make, she guarantees that, once cooked, it “tastes exactly like a lasagne but with much less effort”.
Describing the dish, Emilie said: “Cooked pasta in a creamy tomato sauce flavoured with sausages and crispy bacon and topped with parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
“Baked to golden perfection, this dish is truly one the whole family will enjoy. I promise you will love this.”
Ingredients
400g pasta of your choice
One tablespoon butter
250g bacon, cut into bite-sized pieces
One onion, finely chopped
For garlic clothes, minced
One and a half teaspoons fennel seeds (optional)
500g sausage meat
690g passata
Two-thirds cup single cream
100g parmesan, finely grated
One tablespoon lemon juice, plus zest
300g grated mozzarella
Salt and pepper
Method
The first step is to preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 before getting to work on the sauce. Heat the butter in a large skillet or Dutch oven over a medium-high heat and fry the bacon until golden – about 10 minutes should be good.
Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside, leaving the drippings behind. Then turn the heat down slightly, add the onion and cook for about three minutes until soft.
Add the garlic and fennel seeds and cook for a further two minutes before adding the sausage meat – you might need to turn the heat back up slightly. The sausage meat should take around five to six minutes to cook.
Next, put the pasta on to cook in a big pot of salted water before adding the passata and cream to the sausage mixture and bringing it to a very gentle simmer.
After, add the parmesan and mix in until melted. Add the bacon back in along with the lemon juice and pepper then taste to see how much salt to add. You want it on the saltier side as the pasta will dilute it.
Very gently simmer the sauce on a low heat for 10 minutes while the pasta cooks. You could alternatively cook the pasta first, drain it and toss with a teaspoon of butter while you make the sauce.
Make sure to cook the pasta a minute or two shorter than what the packet says. This is very important as you don’t want it to overcook in the oven.
Reserve a cup of the sauce and set aside then mix the cooked pasta into the rest of it.
In a 22cm x 33cm dish, place half of the pasta mixture and top with an even sprinkling of the lemon zest, 100g of the mozzarella and 30g of the parmesan.
Top with the remaining pasta then evenly distribute the extra cup of sauce over the top in dollops. Then add the remaining 200g of mozzarella and the remaining 30g of parmesan.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until the top is nicely golden brown. Allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving.
