This baked vodka pasta is comfort food heaven! Tender bucatini is swirled in silky vodka sauce, topped with ground beef and mozzarella and baked until melty. It’s so delicious and easy! Cozy comfort food is here for the weekend! This baked vodka pasta is so cozy, tastes amazing and is easy to throw together on […]
The post Baked Bucatini with Vodka Sauce. appeared first on How Sweet Eats.
This baked vodka pasta is comfort food heaven! Tender bucatini is swirled in silky vodka sauce, topped with ground beef and mozzarella and baked until melty. It’s so delicious and easy!
Cozy comfort food is here for the weekend!
This baked vodka pasta is so cozy, tastes amazing and is easy to throw together on a weeknight. It’s also a perfect weekend meal with a big greens salad. Bucatini pasta, vodka sauce that is silky and smooth, melty cheese, fresh basil, tons of parmesan – what more could we want?!
Baked spaghetti has been a go-to meal for us for years. It’s something I make a few times a month because we all love it so much. And it’s simple.
Spaghetti noodles, ground beef or turkey, marinara sauce and cheese.
EASY! It’s so comforting and wonderful. And it seems like a no brainer, but the nice thing is that it just tastes different from regular “pasta and sauce.”
You know? Sometimes we just need a meal like that. Something with familiar flavors that we enjoy, but not the exact meal we are used to.
That is how I develop most recipes and even how I cook dinner.
“What can I make that tastes the same but… isn’t the same?”
Welcome to my life.
I’m pretty sure the best part of the baked spaghetti is the melty cheese. I also love how some parts of the noodles peek out from the sauce and end up crunchy and crisp from the oven. I steal those pieces. Of course.
So this meal is just like that, but with my vodka sauce. Think lots of fresh mozzarella. Herbs. Oh, and bucatini!!
I love bucatini a lot more than spaghetti. The long, tender tubes swirl into sauce much better than other noodles. I cook them al dente so they still have a bit of chew and they’re just perfect.
One of my favorite things about vodka sauce is how silky it is. It coats noodles beautifully – I love that it’s smooth and not chunky. And that it covers every bit of noodle, without any bald spots!
So this is how it comes together:
First, I brown some ground beef. Or turkey! Whichever you’d like to use. Then I remove it and set it aside in a bowl.
Then I make a double batch of my vodka sauce in that same pan. Of course, this is an extra step when you’re used to pouring a jar of marinara in a baking dish. But if you’re a lover of vodka sauce like I am, then you know how important this is!
I also boil the pasta while starting the sauce, because I need some starchy pasta water for it all to come together.
Once the sauce is done, I add a bit of it in the bottom of a baking dish. Then swirl the bucatini into pasta piles in the dish on top. Sprinkle the ground beef mixture all over. Pour the rest of the sauce over the bucatini and do a few twirls so the noodles are mostly coated.
I love this sauce so I want my pasta swimming in it. No lie.
Next, I throw some mozzarella all over the top. I take a ball of it and tear it into pieces. (more…)
The post Baked Bucatini with Vodka Sauce. appeared first on How Sweet Eats.
