In One and Done, senior test kitchen editor Jesse Szewczyk uses one pan—like a Dutch oven, sheet pan, or cast-iron skillet—to make meals you’ll come back to again and again. Click here for even more one-pan meals.
Unlike most baked pasta dishes, this recipe for baked rigatoni doesn’t require you to pre-boil and drain the pasta. You won’t have to pull out a big pan to make a time-consuming marinara sauce, either. Instead, everything comes together in one big casserole dish. Starting with a looser sauce allows the dry pasta to soak up just enough liquid as the dish bakes, yielding a spoonable texture. And when all is said and done, you’ll have just one baking dish to clean.
The type of tomatoes you use matters. While we often recommend whole peeled tomatoes, here we found canned crushed tomatoes produced a meat sauce with just the right amount of clinginess.
This easy pasta recipe requires a good amount of oven cooking time, but it can be baked ahead if you’d like to serve it on a weeknight. Stash the baked rigatoni pasta, covered, in the fridge for up to three days. To reheat, cover it with foil and bake at 350° until warmed through (about 20 minutes).
Recipe information
Total Time
2 hours
Yield
6–8 servings
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Place a rack in middle of oven; preheat to 350°. Combine 10 garlic cloves, finely grated, 4 large sprigs fresh basil, two 28-oz. cans crushed tomatoes, ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, 1 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. Diamond Crystal or 1 Tbsp. Morton kosher salt, 1 tsp. sugar, and ½ tsp. crushed red pepper flakes in a 13x9" baking dish. Add 12 oz. hot Italian sausage, casings removed if needed, breaking up into about 1" pieces, and mix well to coat sausage. Bake, uncovered, 45 minutes (butter should be melted and sauce should be bubbling around the sides).
Step 2
Add 1 lb. rigatoni and 1 cup water and mix to combine. Carefully cover baking dish tightly with foil; bake until pasta is very al dente, 23–27 minutes. Remove from oven, uncover, and stir well.
Step 3
Heat broiler. Evenly top pasta with 1 lb. low-moisture mozzarella cheese, coarsely grated (about 3 cups), and broil until cheese is melted and browned, 5–8 minutes. (Keep a close eye on the cheese as it can go from browned to burnt very quickly.) Remove baked rigatoni from broiler and top with basil leaves to serve.
Editor’s note: Head this way for more of our comfort food favorites →
Recipe notes
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