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Three-cheese baked pasta
Easier-to-swallow option below ↓baked-pasta, fresh-from-oven
A bubbling, golden tray of pasta200 kcal that tastes like dinner and never like a diet in reverse. It reheats beautifully, so a batch on Sunday feeds the harder days of the week.
The sauce is a simple cheese110 kcal béchamel — a butter102 kcal-and-flour28 kcal roux loosened with whole milk149 kcal and melted full of cheddar113 kcal, mozzarella85 kcal and parmesan110 kcal. It's rich on purpose. That's the point.
Make it once, eat it three times
Bake the whole tray, then portion the leftovers. Cold pasta from the fridge, gently reheated, is one of the easiest ways to meet your numbers on a day when cooking feels like a lot.
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Three-cheese baked pasta
Prep
15 min
Cook
35 min
Serves
4
Per serving
+680
Ingredients
- 400g penne200 kcal or rigatoni200 kcal
- 2 tbsp butter
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 600ml whole milk
- 150g cheddar, grated
- 100g mozzarella, torn
- 50g parmesan, grated
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- Handful of breadcrumbs110 kcal
- Olive oil119 kcal, salt, pepper
Method
- Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan). Cook the pasta 2 minutes short of the packet time, then drain.
- Melt the butter, stir in the flour, and cook 1 minute. Whisk in the milk122 kcal a little at a time until smooth and thickened.
- Off the heat, stir in the cheddar, parmesan, and mustard until melted. Season well.
- Fold the pasta through the sauce with most of the mozzarella, then tip into a baking dish.
- Scatter the rest of the mozzarella and the breadcrumbs on top, drizzle with olive oil, and bake 18–20 minutes until golden and bubbling.
Stir a tin of tuna, some shredded chicken209 kcal, or roasted veg through the sauce to turn it into a fuller meal.
Make it your own
- Assemble it the night before and bake straight from the fridge (add 5 minutes).
- Freezes well in single portions for up to a month.
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