Easy Family-Style Baked Spaghetti Casserole

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy

Watch the recipe

YouTube ↗

Cooking With Anadi

12K subscribers · spaghetti, marinara and melted cheese in one bubbly dish

Subscribe

Watch the full method on YouTube →

Easy Family-Style Baked Spaghetti Casserole

I love making this baked spaghetti casserole for my family or just for myself when I want the simplest of comforting dinners! It’s loaded with flavor from the tomato sauce and is so cheesy from those delicate cubes of mozzarella cheese. I’d consider this an easy vegetarian modification of my Cheesy Baked Spaghetti with Meat Sauce!

The sauce here is inspired by my Classic Marinara Sauce, with just a slight modification as you’ll see below! For other awesome recipes with my marinara sauce, you’ll want to check these out!

• Spaghetti & Meatballs with Classic Marinara
• Classic Chicken Parmesan with Spaghetti Marinara
• Cheesy Italian Meatballs in Marinara Sauce

If you’ve never made baked spaghetti before, I recommend you start here! This recipe only uses a few ingredients. Of course, later on, you can modify this base recipe and make it your own!

Be sure to watch the video to watch how this amazing family-style spaghetti casserole is made! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’re not already! Also make sure to hit the bell icon so you receive the notifications when the video recipes go live! I love to share the recipes in video form so that you’re set up for success when you give this a try! Let’s get cooking!

Tools Needed

• Nonstick pan
• Wooden spoon
• Baking sheet
• Casserole dish
• Measuring spoons

Ingredients for Baked Spaghetti

Let’s see what we need for the tomato sauce and for the best spaghetti bake! Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of this post for the FULL PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD to see all the ingredients and their quantities, and to save the recipe for later! The recipe card is great because you can scale the recipe based on the size of your casserole and how many portions you’d like to make! Everything will automatically be adjusted in the recipe card right before your eyes so you don’t have to do any calculations!

For the Tomato Sauce

• Salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Garlic
• Italian/San Marzano type tomatoes
• Red chili flakes
• Calabrian pepper paste

For the Casserole

• Spaghetti
• Grape tomatoes
• Italian blend cheese
• Mini bocconcini
• Fresh basil

How straightforward is that!! You can have leftover cooked pasta to save you time, but even if you’re cooking the spaghetti for this dinner, making this recipe is almost effortless. If you’ve got hungry mouths (or just yours!) to feed, dinner will be on the table in no time with this stress-free dinner.

How to Make Baked Spaghetti

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Heat olive oil on medium heat and once hot, add garlic and Calabrian pepper paste. Mix well and saute until the garlic is translucent and fragrant.

Add the can of San Marzano tomatoes and break down any whole tomatoes to smaller chunks using the back of a spoon. Stir well and bring the sauce to a gentle simmer.

Season with salt and simmer the sauce until it has thickened slightly.

Cook your pasta as per package directions. Make sure to cook the pasta for 6-7 minutes. The pasta should not be fully cooked as it will continue to cook in the oven.

Transfer the spaghetti to the pan with the sauce and mix well.

Then transfer this to a casserole and spread evenly.

Top with the grape tomatoes, bocconcini mozzarella and shredded cheese.

Bake the casserole for 25-30 minutes.

Top with fresh basil, serve hot and enjoy!

Tips for a Perfect Cheesy Baked Spaghetti

• Add more chopped calabrian peppers for an additional level of spice and flavor.
• Try not to overdo the sauce with seasoning - great quality tomatoes is all you need to make this casserole great.
• If you cannot find fresh San Marzano tomatoes, look for a can that specifies the type of tomatoes being used.
• Season and taste the dish at every stage for the best tasting casserole.

Variations

If you don’t want the grape tomatoes then simply omit them! I just wanted to add some more body to our sauce, and I didn’t want to add extra veggies so we focus on the cheese and keep the sauce super quick and simple! Additionally, if you don’t have mini bocconcini, feel free to use any kind of bocconcini or even burrata. Otherwise, if you don’t have any of that, I would recommend that you use mozzarella and cut it in cubes in addition to your Italian cheese blend. You’ll get the nice patches of cheese that come from the bocconcini! Check out the pictures below to see how that’s done!

In fact, if you want to make this Easy Baked Spaghetti single serve, you totally could! Just find an individual portion casserole dish, and cut down the recipe for one, or evenly distribute your pasta among multiple individual casseroles! No sharing and someone perhaps stealing your portion!

What to Serve With Cheesy Baked Spaghetti

Here are some great sides to pair with your Cheesy Baked Spaghetti!

• Cheesy Mozzarella Sticks
• Buffalo Chicken Wings
• Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad
• Pizza Hut India Spicy Supreme Garlic Bread

This Baked Spaghetti Has No Meat in It At All

Almost every baked spaghetti recipe you will find is built on a pound of ground beef. This one has none. No lean ground beef, no ground turkey, no Italian sausage, nothing. It is completely vegetarian, and the body that a meat sauce normally provides comes instead from a 28 ounce can of Italian San Marzano tomatoes, broken down into smaller chunks with the back of a spoon while the sauce simmers. It still lands at 33 g of protein, which comes from the pasta and the cheese rather than from anything that had to be browned in a pan first.

The cheese list is short too, and it is probably not what you expect. There is no ricotta and no cottage cheese, which are the two things most baked spaghetti recipes fold through the middle. There is no egg binding it, and no parmesan cheese. What you get is 1 cup of mini bocconcini mozzarella and a third of a cup of Italian Blend shredded cheese, and neither is stirred in. Both go on top, right before it bakes. The vegetables are just as short: no onions, no yellow onion, no bell pepper and no mushrooms. Three thinly sliced garlic cloves are the entire aromatic bill for the whole dish.

The Sauce Comes From One Can, Not a Jar

There is no jar marinara sauce here, and the sauce takes about as long as opening one would. Two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil go into a pan on medium heat, not medium-high, then the 3 thinly sliced garlic cloves and 2 tablespoons of Calabrian pepper paste, the kind sold as bomba. Saute that until the garlic turns translucent and fragrant, then in goes the can, broken up with a spoon, brought to a gentle simmer, salted, and left until it thickens slightly. That is the whole sauce.

Note the size: it is a 28 ounce can, not a 32-ounce one. The extra liquid in a larger can would leave you with a looser sauce, and this one has to hold onto the pasta through half an hour in the oven rather than pool at the bottom of the dish. Note also what is not in it. No Italian seasoning, no dried oregano, no parsley and no red pepper flakes. The Calabrian pepper paste is doing all of the heat and all of the seasoning beyond salt, which is why 2 tablespoons of it is not a small amount. Harissa paste is the closest swap with a similar heat and a smokier edge; sambal oelek is less complex, so add a pinch of red pepper flakes alongside it. If San Marzano tomatoes are not on the shelf, crushed tomatoes work at the same amount but come out less sweet and more acidic, and about 2 lbs of fresh Roma tomatoes, blanched, peeled and crushed, will also do it.

Undercook the Spaghetti: 6 to 7 Minutes, Not the Package Time

This is the one step that decides whether the dish works, and it is easy to get wrong because it asks you to ignore the box. Boil 8 to 12 oz of spaghetti noodles according to the package directions, but pull them at 6 to 7 minutes. They should not be fully cooked when they come out. The pasta keeps cooking in the oven for another 25 to 30 minutes, so spaghetti that was already done going in comes out soft and loose. Drain it, then tip the spaghetti into the pan the sauce is already in rather than pouring sauce over pasta. The sauce pan doubles as the mixing bowl, which is why there is no large skillet and no third pan in this recipe.

Spread the spaghetti mixture evenly into the casserole. This is not a layered bake: there are no alternating layers of pasta and cheese to build, and nothing in the instructions covers it, so there are no layers of foil going over the top either. One even layer, then the toppings, in order: a handful of grape tomatoes, the mini bocconcini, then the shredded cheese last so it browns into the cheesy top. Into a 400 F oven for 25 to 30 minutes, uncovered the whole time. The fresh basil goes on after it comes out of the oven and never before, because basil in a 400 degree oven for half an hour turns black and tastes of nothing. Fresh mint gives it a lighter herbal finish and flat-leaf parsley is the neutral option if basil is not around.

Portions, Leftovers and Taking It to a Potluck

Twenty minutes of prep, 25 in the oven, 45 minutes in total. The recipe card makes 2 casseroles, and one of them is 807 calories with 33 g of protein, 89 g of carbs, 35 g of fat, 4 g of fiber, 4 g of sugar and 799 mg of sodium. That is a substantial plate rather than a side, and with a salad alongside one casserole comfortably does two people. Worth knowing before you scale it up, because a potluck quantity is fewer dishes than the calorie number makes it sound.