If you haven’t jumped on the Baked Feta Tomato Pasta trend, it is time! Made with whole ingredients like tomatoes and basil, this pasta dish is full of flavor, perfectly creamy, and so easy to make.
After you’ve tried this one, fill your pasta cravings with Creamy Sausage Pasta, Shrimp Scampi with Pasta, or One Pot Chicken Parmesan Pasta.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Easy to Make: This baked feta pasta requires basically no prep, and spends all of the cooking time in the oven. You’ll just have to combine the ingredients in a baking dish, bake, and cook some pasta! It couldn’t get any easier to make such a delicious meal. You might even have time to make some crusty garlic bread along with it!
Satisfying: This is a vegetarian meal, but it is so savory and satisfying. The combination of roasted garlic, tomatoes and feta cheese create a fresh yet creamy sauce that is perfect for pasta. Just choose your favorite pasta shape and this might just be the perfect meal!
Ingredients
- Grape Tomatoes: I like to use grape tomatoes in this recipe. They provide a great flavor and get nice and blistered in the oven, which creates even more flavor.
- Pimentos: If you don’t know what pimentos are, they are small pieces of red pepper that add a slightly sweet taste and aromatic smell.
- Olive Oil: Douse all of the ingredients in olive oil for flavor and to keep everything from drying out in the oven.
- Fresh Garlic: Fresh garlic cloves get roasted along with the tomatoes and feta. This brings out more flavor from the garlic.
- Feta: For this recipe, it is best to use a block of feta. The block will get soft with a golden top while in the oven.
- Pasta: You can use your favorite short pasta shape for this recipe.
- Basil: At the end of mixing all the ingredients together, fresh basil added in will add flavor and color.
Here’s How to Make It
Step by Step Instructions
Making baked feta tomato pasta is easy with just a baking dish and a pot of water. Here are the simple instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. (not pictured)
- In the bottom of a baking dish, mix the tomatoes, pimentos, olive oil, bashed garlic cloves, salt and pepper. Place the feta in the middle of the dish, and turn it over so the top is coated with oil. Bake for 40 minutes until the cheese is soft and golden. (photos 1-3)
- Towards the end of the cooking time, cook the pasta in a pan of boiling, salted water as per the package instructions. (photo 4)
- Drain the pasta, but set aside one cup of pasta cooking water. Return the pasta to the pan before stirring in the cooking tomato feta mixture along with the shredded basil, until the pasta is coated in a creamy sauce, adding pasta cooking water to thin it out as necessary. Add more salt and pepper to taste if needed. Serve and enjoy! (photos 5-6)
Expert Tips
- Use fresh ingredients! Since baked feta pasta doesn’t use that many ingredients, making sure that each ingredients is fresh and high quality will make this dish even better. Fresh tomatoes as opposed to canned, along with fresh basil will make the pasta delicious!
- Pasta shapes galore! You can use any type of short pasta that you would like. Something like penne, rigatoni, fusilli, farfalle, or small shells would work really well!
- Pack the baking dish with tomatoes. You really want to pack the baking dish with tomatoes so that they don’t dry up. With the tomatoes being packed together, they will keep more of their juices and therefore more flavor. If you think that your baking dish is too big, try a smaller one!
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, you can use crumbled feta cheese but try to pile it all up in the middle so that it can all melt together!
You can use goat’s cheese, which is similar in taste and texture to feta. If you want to stay away from feta and goat’s cheese, try full fat ricotta!
Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. You can simply reheat the pasta in the microwave, or enjoy it cold like a pasta salad!
More Easy Pasta Recipes to Try
- Creamy Mushroom Pasta with Bacon
- Orecchiette Pasta with Sausage
- Pesto Pasta Salad Recipe
- Sheet Pan Gnocchi with Sausage
- One Pot Chicken Parmesan Pasta
Baked Feta Tomato Pasta
Ingredients
- 1 lb grape tomatoes
- 1 4oz can diced pimentos - drained
- 5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 4 large garlic cloves
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp cracked black pepper
- 8 oz block feta
- 14 oz short pasta shapes
- small bunch basil - shredded
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In the bottom of a baking dish, mix the tomatoes, pimentos, olive oil, bashed garlic cloves, salt and pepper. Place the feta in the middle of the dish, and turn it over so the top is coated with oil. Bake for 40 minutes until the cheese is soft and golden.
- Towards the end of the cooking time, cook the pasta in a pan of boiling, salted water per the package instructions.
- Drain the pasta, but set aside a cup of pasta cooking water. Return the pasta to the pan before stirring in the cooked tomato feta mixture along with the shredded basil until the pasta is coated in a creaming sauce, adding the pasta cooking water to thin it out if necessary. Add more salt and pepper to taste if needed.
Yum! This looks so good!
Oooh I love those big chunks of artichoke! Yum!
healthy and delicious dish!
Dang, girl!!! I’m pretty sure this will be my new favorite dip. I love that you used Greek yogurt and light mayo.
This is an amazing dip! I served it with red peppers for a low carb option. Everyone loved it! I am going to make it in my mini crock pot for Super Bowl so it will stay warm! Love your siite#
Thanks so much Bonnie! I’m so glad you like this dip as much as we do, so easy and the flavor – so good! I love that you did the red peppers! So great!