Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach & Sausage

This Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach & Sausage is a great way to add variety to pasta night. An elevated comfort meal with protein and veggies.

I have to admit that I’ve never been a big pasta person, except for my mom’s homemade spaghetti. It was the dish I requested for my birthday every year growing up. But other than that, we never had a lot of pasta dishes on the rotation in our family kitchen. Over the years I have introduced pasta a bit more, just to add variety and ease to my meals. (It’s seriously such a simple dish to whip up!) But after creating this Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Sausage, I will definitely be enjoying more pasta in my near future.

Although this dish takes a bit longer to make than most of my recipes, the tasks are simple and straightforward. From cooking pasta, to sauteing some sausage and spinach, to grating some cheese and putting it altogether, you can’t go wrong!

Ingredients for Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach & Sausage

This Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Sausage does not require a laundry list of ingredients and I’m sure you will have most of them in your pantry already. Here is what you need:

• Pasta noodles
  • I recommend using a penne noodle in this dish. If you want to experiment with other types of pasta, be my guest!
  • Gluten-free option: opt for gluten-free penne noodles.
• Onion
  • I used half of a large white onion and diced it up so there aren’t big chunks of it in the dish.
• Garlic
  • What’s a pasta dish without some garlic? Use at least 3 cloves in the this recipe. The limit does not exist.
• Sausage
  • I use a mild Italian sausage in this recipe as the flavour profile is very similar.
  • Reminder! Don’t forget to remove the sausages from their casing to make it easier to crumble the meat.
  • Substitution: use ground turkey, chicken or beef.
  • Plant-based option: lentils or crumbled tofu.
• Spinach
  • Use fresh spinach leaves instead of frozen to prevent a lot of extra water getting into the meat mixture.
• Cheese
  • Use grated mozzarella or parmesan, whatever you have or prefer.
• Roasted Tomato and Garlic Pasta Sauce
  • If you haven’t already made this, check out the recipe here.
  • Substitution: you can opt for your choice of a tomato-based pasta sauce.

How to Make Homemade Pasta Sauce

For this recipe, I recommend making your own pasta sauce! Before you write it off, just hear me out. It’s not as hard as it may sound and it takes the flavours to the next level! You can follow along with my Roasted Tomato and Garlic Pasta Sauce.

Once the tomatoes and garlic are roasted and cooled, the next steps are incredibly easy. All you have to do is transfer them into a blender or food processor, add the herbs and goat cheese and blend until smooth.

If you don’t have the time or the ingredients to make the sauce from scratch, you can definitely still opt for your favourite tomato-based pasta sauce.

I hope this Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Sausage makes you excited to make dinner again. Don’t forget to check out some of these other main dishes for more dinner inspiration:

• Baked Garlic Dijon Meatballs
• 20-minute Balsamic Dill Chicken
• Edamame Noodle Bowl with Peanut Sauce
• Lemon Dill and Dijon Salmon

 

If you make this Cheesy Baked Pasta with Spinach and Sausage, I would love to see your comment and rating below. It also makes my day seeing your creations of my recipes on Instagram- don’t forget to tag @allnutrition.rd!