Sausage meatball pasta bake
- Published: 30 Apr 09
- Updated: 26 May 25
Ziti is a long, hollow pasta that’s brilliant at catching all the tomato sauce, but bucatini or macaroni would work well too. We love it in this sausage meatball pasta bake and we think you will too.
Or, skip the bake part and make our sausage and sage pasta instead.
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Serves 6
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Takes 20 min to make, 40-50 minutes to cook, plus cooling, freezing, defrosting and reheating
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary leaves
- 500g good-quality pork sausages, skinned
- 1 white bread slice, whizzed to crumbs in a food processor
- 1 large free-range egg yolk
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 500g pack ziti (from Italian delis), snapped into 3, or macaroni or bucatini
- 400g can chopped tomatoes
- 700g jar passata
- 300ml chicken stock, hot
- 50g grated Parmesan or Grana Padano
- Fresh thyme sprigs, to garnish
Method
- Heat the oil in a frying pan and gently fry the onion, garlic and rosemary for 5 minutes until softened and golden.
- Put the sausagemeat in a bowl. Mix in the fried onion, breadcrumbs, egg yolk, fennel seeds and some black pepper. Roll into walnut-size balls.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan180°C/gas 6. Cook the pasta in a large pan of boiling, slightly salted water for 5 minutes, then drain well.
- Tip the pasta into an ovenproof dish. Mix with the tomatoes, passata, stock and sausage balls. Season, scatter over the cheese and bake for 30-40 minutes until the sausage balls are cooked through.
- Cool completely, then wrap in cling film and freeze for up to 2 months. Defrost thoroughly before reheating at 190°C/fan 170°C/gas 5 for 30 minutes until piping hot – cover with foil if it’s browning too much. Garnish with fresh thyme sprigs to serve
- Recipe from May 2009 Issue
Nutrition
- Calories
- 685kcals
- Fat
- 28.5g (10.2g saturated)
- Protein
- 28.2g
- Carbohydrates
- 85g (7g sugar)
- Salt
- 2.4g
delicious. tips
Slightly undercook the pasta – it will finish cooking in the oven.
Baking the pasta dishes before freezing prevents the pasta sticking together.
You can reheat these in the microwave. Defrost, cover with cling film and cook for 4-5 minutes or until piping hot.
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Really easy recipe. I made a few small changes.
1) I browned the sausage meatballs before adding to the pasta, I felt this gave them more flavour and they had a better appearance
2) I added garlic and onion granules to the tomato sauce plus some chopped fresh basil
3) I added cheddar cheese to the top of the bake for the last ten minutes
Great to hear you enjoyed this recipe, Jo, and that you made it your own.