Baked One Pot Pasta

Baked One Pot Pasta

This is one of those recipes we keep coming back to on a weeknight when we want something proper and comforting without standing over the hob for an hour. Everything goes into one tin, the oven does the hard work, and you end up with pasta that's cooked right in the sauce so every piece is packed with flavour. We're talking sweet cherry tomatoes, smoky roasted peppers, a good hit of nooch for that savoury depth, and a rich tomato base that gets beautifully jammy in the oven. Honestly, once you've made pasta this way you'll wonder why you ever boiled it separately.

Cook: 45 min
Serves 4

Before You Start

  • Preheat oven to 200°C
  • Large baking dish or roasting tin

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp tomato purée
  • 1 tbsp garlic purée
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 250g cherry tomatoes
  • 1 x 400g can Polpa chopped tomatoes
  • 2 tbsp Nooch
  • ½ tbsp pepper
  • 800ml water
  • 500g penne pasta
  • 20g fresh basil
  • 2 pointy red peppers
  • 3 tbsp olive oil

Method

1

Prepare the vegetables

  • Quarter the cherry tomatoes
  • Halve, core and finely slice the red peppers
2

Build the dish

  • Add the tomatoes, peppers and tomato puree to the tin, drizzle with olive oil and stir to coat
  • Add the chopped tomatoes, nooch, garlic puree, sugar, salt, pepper and water and stir to combine
  • Add the penne pasta to the pan and fold it into the sauce, making sure the pasta’s well covered
3

Roast, finish and serve

  • Put the tray in the oven and roast for 40 minutes
  • Pick the basil leaves, save the smaller leaves for garnish and finely slice the rest
  • Remove the dish from the oven, sprinkle over the finely sliced basil and fold into the baked pasta
  • Spoon the pasta into serving bowls, garnish with basil, nooch, salt and pepper and serve immediately

Tips & Variations

  • Make it saucier: If you like your pasta with a bit more sauce, just add an extra splash of water before it goes in the oven. The pasta soaks up a lot as it bakes so it's worth checking halfway through.
  • Add some greens: We love throwing a big handful of spinach or kale into the tin for the last five minutes of cooking. It wilts right into the sauce and bulks it out nicely.
  • Top it properly: A scattering of toasted pine nuts or a dollop of cashew cream on top before serving takes this from a weeknight dinner to something you'd happily put in front of guests.

Why This Works

The trick here is that the pasta absorbs the sauce as it bakes rather than just sitting in it, which means the flavour goes all the way through every piece of penne. Roasting the cherry tomatoes and peppers first lets them caramelise slightly and get really sweet, which gives the whole dish a richness you just can't get from a quick stovetop sauce. The nooch is the secret weapon, it adds this umami, almost cheesy depth that makes it taste like it's been cooking for hours.