EASY WEEKNIGHT PASTA BAKE
Everyone needs that one meal that can be pre-prepped, frozen and tossed in the oven on nights when mom isn’t going to be home. Because for some reason, the people that live here still think they should be fed 🤣🤣.
My Mom’s Group meets every Thursday night and by Thursday I do not want to be in the kitchen 10 minutes before I need to leave, trying to figure out what is for dinner for everyone else. I started making this Pasta Bake meal and realized that besides being SO easy, it can also be prepped in bulk and frozen.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
I make these in 6x9 foil pans that have cardboard lids and can be frozen. I’ve found that 1 box of rotini pasta can be split between about 3 of these pans.
Reminder, my kids are 3 and 7, so this size pan is the perfect size for my husband and both boys. If your children are older, you might want to use an 8x10 pan.
Cook pasta till al dente. I have made this recipe with rotini, bowtie and elbow pasta. The type of pasta is completely up to you! Sometimes mine is half and half because that’s what I had on hand.
In each pan, add 10-12 cooked meatballs. I like these from Sam’s Club. Add enough cooked pasta to fill in the rest of the pan, usually about 1.5 cups.
Cover with marinara sauce of choice and top with shredded mozzarella cheese.
Cover with foil and bake at 375 for 5-10 minutes or until cheese is melted and dish is warmed through.
If you are making this as a freezer meal, everything in the recipe remains the same EXCEPT for the meatballs. Do not warm/cook the meatballs prior. That’s why I like using the precooked meatballs from Sam’s Club because they will warm when you are cooking the meal from frozen. Cover with foil and Bake at 375 for 1 hour, then turn heat to 400, remove foil and cook for 10 additional minutes or until cheese is melted and dish is warmed through.
Don’t forget to pin this recipe for future use!
Disclaimer: I am not a professionally trained chef.
I’m a mama with a busy schedule, who loves cooking shows and has two very, VERY active boys! I enjoy making food that is quick, simple and easy to clean up.
I do not love extremely long recipe posts that share my every thought as I created the dish or that repeat the same thing over and over 🤣.
I’ll leave that to the professionals 😜.
Any recipe I share has been tested by my own family and officially approved with two thumbs up 👍👍!