The secret to a better baked pasta? Don’t cook your pasta

Baked penne with prosciutto and fontina

If there’s anything more comforting than boiled pasta in a sauce, it’s got to be baked pasta in a sauce. The baking adds a crispy crust that is such a delicious contrast to the tender goodness of the dish.

The challenge is to howto get the pasta to turn out just right.

Most baked pasta recipes instruct youto boil the noodles until cooked halfway before baking them. This allows the pasta to finish cooking in the oven as it bathes in the sauce.

But this method has challenges. If you boil the noodles more than halfway, they’ll be overcooked by the time you pull the finished dish out of the oven. I find it hard to get the pre-cooking time right.

Andprecooking the pasta, evenhalfway, takes work and dirties a large pot and colander.

Then again, if you don’t precook the pastaandinsteadaddit dry to the sauce for baking, it will take much longer to become tender in the oven, even as it absorbs all the liquid in the sauce. Dry pasta needs to hydrate. So what’s a home cook to do? Use my simple no-cook method of precooking the pasta. Just soak the pasta in warm salted water before adding it to the other ingredients and sliding the mixture into the oven.

Presoaking is a way to begin hydrating the pasta and washing away some of its starch, even as the salt in the water preseasons the pasta.

Yes, you’ll dirty a bowl, but given that that’s the same vessel in which you’ll combine all the dish’s ingredients, it’s the only bowl you’ll need.

The soak requires 45 minutes, but it’s hands-off time, freeing you up to prep the rest of the ingredients in the meantime. Then it takes no time at all to assemble the dish and pop it into the oven.

Just 20 or so minutes later you can collect your reward: deeply-flavored baked pasta, creamy on the bottom and crispy on top.

The perfect wintry entree. Add a salad and some crusty bread and be happy.

Nutrition information per serving: