A tasty and complete meal, this Sausage and Ricotta Baked Pasta is everything I love on busy weeknights and is the perfect make ahead dinner. Made with a tomato based sauce, lots of melted mozzarella & dotted with fresh ricotta, this will be your new favourite pasta bake.

Ingredients for this Sausage and Ricotta Baked Pasta

• Pasta: My go-to for this recipe is Rigatoni! I really love using this pasta shape as it holds onto the sauce and the cheese well when baked. My favourite brands that I use all the time are Molisana and Barilla. Penne, Paccheri or Ziti will also work well as pasta types for this one. Make sure that when cooking the pasta you cook it till al dente only, just with a slight bite to it. It’s super important! The pasta will have some further cooking in the oven with the sauce so no overcooking is a must.
• Eggplant & Baby Spinach: I love adding some vegetables to baked pasta dishes to add some lightness to it. You can add any other vegetables you like, peppers and zucchini would go great in this too.
• Pork Sausages: The best you can find at your local butcher or supermarket! I like using pork and fennel or italian style sausages with lots of pepper and sometimes chilli. Chicken or beef sausages or even chorizo are great substitutes too. I don’t usually take the casings off before slicing and cooking but if you prefer you can.
• Onion & Garlic: the base of the red sauce when making the soffritto
• Passata & Tomato Paste: my absolutely favourite brand is MUTTI! Passata will make a thicker sauce vs using tinned tomatoes, which you would generally need to cook for a bit longer.
• Worcestershire Sauce: an essential ingredient in most of the sauces I make. It adds a tang and savoury flavour to the sauces. When cooked through for a little while it adds another layer or dept to any red or meat sauce.
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Salt & Pepper: Season season season! for the veggies & the sauce.
• Shredded Mozzarella: Lots of it for layering through the pasta and at the top to become deliciously melty!
• Fresh Ricotta: If I can get some fresh one from the deli, that would be my go to! But a small tub of normal or smooth ricotta works perfectly well too. It adds a beautiful creaminess to the dish and bakes like a dream!
• Fresh basil, to garnish

How to make Sausage and Ricotta Baked Pasta

Cooking the eggplant, sausages & spinach

First step is to cook the eggplant, sausages & spinach. With a few generous tablespoons of olive oil, season and cook down the eggplant till it softens and gets a bit of a char. Add the sliced sausages and also cook them down. Lastly, add and wilt the spinach in the same pan with the eggplant and sausages.

All the flavours will have a chance to mingle and the fat from the sausages will add more taste to the vegetables. Put then all these aside in a bowl. You can use the same pan for the next step, so no need to wash unless there are any burned bits and you can move onto the sauce.

Tip: To save time – you can also use a separate non-stick pan and cook off the sausages, eggplant & spinach at the same time as you make the sauce in another pot.

Tomato Sugo or Sauce

Next step the sauce. To me an absolute must in making a tasty red sauce for any pasta is TIME! Unless you are using very fresh and sweet, fully ripened tomatoes where you can make a quick fresh sauce in a short amount of time, anytime I use tinned tomatoes, passata or tomato paste, these NEED to be cooked off first. This is to take off the raw / sour taste off the tomatoes and give it a much more mellow, complex flavour.

First we start off with making the soffritto, which is very gently frying off onion and garlic for 5-10 minutes. Then we add the passata, water (to rinse out the passata jar), tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce and salt. I then simmer the tomato sauce for at least 15-20 minutes. Once the sauce is cooked, add the sausages, eggplant and spinach back in. In the meantime you can also have the rigatoni boiling away in a large pot of generously salted boiling water.

Mix together, Layer and Top with lots of cheese!

Once the pasta is cooked just till al dente and strained, put it back in the large pot with some olive oil. Add half of the sauce to it and mix through gently and let everything cool down slightly. This is so the mozzarella doesn’t melt completely as soon as you top your pasta.

Get a large baking dish and layer a third of the pasta and dot with some of the fresh ricotta, a large handful of shredded mozzarella and a bit more of the sauce. Repeat two more times ensuring the top layer has quite a bit of mozzarella. Layering it like a lasagna will ensure the pasta bake won’t be dry (it will be saucy, just the way I like pasta!) and will have some melty goodness the whole way through, not just at the top!

If your preference is to have less sauce on the pasta bake – you can also just freeze some of the sauce and save it for another day!

Bake & Enjoy!

Once all the layers and toppings are done, add a slug of olive oil and bake uncovered in a preheated oven at 200 C (180 C for Fan Forced oven) / 390 F for 20-25 minutes, till the top just starts to brown. Once it’s cooked, let everything rest out of the oven for 5 minutes before serving. This is so the pasta can hold the sauce and cheese a bit better when serving.

Planning to make it ahead of time? Some handy tips when making this Sausage and Ricotta Baked Pasta

This Sausage and Ricotta Baked Pasta dish is a perfect make ahead meal. Everything aside from the baking can be made ahead! So all you have to do is pop in the oven when you are ready to eat!

• Tip 1: If the pasta bake has been in the fridge before baking – it will need longer baking time. Bake covered for 20 minutes at 180 C / 350 F to warm the centre and for another 20 minutes uncovered to brown at 180 C / 350 F.

• Tip 2: If you want to freeze the pasta bake, cook the sauce, eggplant, spinach and eggplant and pasta and let the ingredients cool down before mixing them together. Arrange in a freezer safe dish and top with all the cheeses and tightly wrap it with cling film and / or lid. It will keep for up to 3 months! Once you are ready to eat it, defrost overnight in the fridge completely and bake as per above.

Hope you enjoy this one that is a favourite in my house!