Baked Rigatoni with Sausage and Fennel
A one-pot pasta bake that finishes under the broiler, built for a table that needs feeding twice.
- Serves
- 6
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Written
Method
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Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the rigatoni about 2 minutes short of the package’s al dente time, then drain.
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Heat the olive oil in a wide, oven-safe pot over medium-high and brown the sausage, breaking it into pieces, until no pink remains.
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Add the fennel and onion and cook until the fennel has softened and turned translucent at the edges, about 8 minutes.
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Stir in the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
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Pour in the wine, scraping up the browned bits, and simmer until it has mostly evaporated.
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Add the crushed tomatoes and simmer until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
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Fold the drained rigatoni into the sauce along with half the mozzarella, then scatter the rest of the mozzarella and the Parmesan over the top.
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Bake at 425°F until the cheese is browned in patches and the sauce bubbles at the edges, about 20 minutes.
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Rest for 5 minutes, scatter with fennel fronds, and serve straight from the pot.
Notes
Pull the pasta before it’s done — it keeps cooking in the oven, and rigatoni that was already al dente at the stove turns to paste by the time the cheese browns. Cooking everything in one oven-safe pot means no scraping sauce into a separate dish, and one less thing to wash.
No fennel bulb, no problem: a diced celery rib and a pinch of fennel seed gets you most of the way there. For a vegetarian version, swap the sausage for a can of drained white beans added with the tomatoes, and use a good pinch of extra red pepper flakes to make up for what the sausage was doing.