Spinach Ricotta Pasta Bake is made with creamy ricotta and loads of spinach stirred through pasta, topped with pasta sauce, cheese and then baked until bubbly and golden. Spinach pasta healthy and Ricotta Spinach and ricotta.
So why don’t we stir it through pasta bakes? This is a lazy Monday meal I’ve been making for years. I know it’s a little different, but it really is tasty. Ricotta Pasta Bake – Quick to put together, and made from scratch! Made extra creamy by adding milk into the ricotta. Extra flavour addition possibilities are endless! Because this is a lazy meal, I make this with my shortcut homemade pasta sauce.
It’s a shortcut recipe because I don’t cook it on the stove with sautéed onions and garlic like I ordinarily do. All I do is add pasta sauce flavourings right into a bottle of tomato passata, shake then pour it over the pasta bake. To compensate for skipping the sautéed garlic and onions, I add extra flavours into the sauce. Tomato passata is pureed strained raw tomatoes, unflavoured. It’s sold in tall bottles in the pasta section of most supermarkets in Australia nowadays, and costs around the same as canned tomato.
What goes in Spinach Ricotta Pasta Bake Here’s a snapshot of the ingredients. For convenience, I use frozen spinach here but fresh can be used in a cinch. As for the ricotta, any type will work here. Some are creamier and softer than others which makes it easy to mix into the pasta. The starch in the pasta cooking water will make the ricotta mixture bind better than using normal water or milk to loosen the mixture. Because as much as we all love eating those stuffed tubes of pasta smothered in tomato sauce and molten cheese, nobody’s jumping off the couch to offer to help stuff them.
OK, so it’s not baked, but it looks like a pasta bake! Subscribe to my newsletter and follow along on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram for all of the latest updates. A lazy meal for midweek that tastes like spinach and ricotta stuffed shells or cannelloni – but without all the labour! Feel free to use your favourite store bought pasta sauce if you prefer. Reheats well and freezes well too!
Add the remaining Pasta Sauce ingredients into the bottle, screw the lid on and give it a shake. Cook pasta for time per packet MINUS 1 minute. SCOOP OUT 1 mugful pasta cooking water, drain and set aside. Ricotta Mixture – Mix Ricotta Mixture ingredients in a very large bowl.
Use a splash of pasta cooking water if needed to make it creamy. Add pasta and stir to combine. Transfer to a heatproof baking dish. Top with Pasta Sauce, top with cheese.