This easy pizza pasta bake features all of the pizza flavors you love in a delicious cheesy casserole! We add pepperoni, sausage and green pepper but feel free to add in your own favorite toppings such as mushrooms, olives or ham!
Pizza Pasta Bake is a super easy cheesy casserole with layers of pasta & tons of gooey cheese! This is one dish the whole family will easily agree on, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a Pizza Pasta Casserole!!
You’ll want to make sure you use a good quality pasta sauce in this recipe… and I’ve even been known to replace some of the pasta sauce with a small can of pizza sauce for a little bit extra kick!
This recipe is not only really easy, it’s very versatile! Add in your own favorite pizza toppings or sneak in a bunch of extra veggies from your fridge and watch the kids gobble them up! (If your toppings are watery like mushrooms, be sure to cook them first so your dish doesn’t become watery!).
Items you you’ll need for this recipe
* 9×13 pan * cavatappi pasta (or other short pasta) * high quality pasta sauce *
Pizza Pasta Bake
Ingredients
- 12 ounces cavatappi penne, or rotini
- 1 medium onion diced
- ½ pound Italian sausage mild or hot
- ½ pound lean ground beef
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- ½ red bell pepper diced
- ½ green bell pepper diced
- 14.5 ounces canned diced tomatoes drained, 1 can
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 4 cups pasta sauce
- 2-3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 28 slices pepperoni
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Cook pasta according el dente to package directions. Rinse under cold water and drain well.
- Brown onion, garlic, sausage and beef in a large pan over medium heat. Drain any fat. Add in red and green peppers and cook an additional 2-3 minutes. Add oregano, drained tomatoes and pasta sauce, stir well.
- Place pasta in a greased 9×13 pan. Pour meat sauce over pasta and top with cheese and pepperoni slices.
- Bake 35-40 minutes uncovered or until cheese is melted and pasta is heated through.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Dinner
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Here are a few more recipes you’ll love
* Pizza Stuffed Shells * Pizza Bombs * Taco Tater Tot Bake *
I like your recipe
can you freeze this? instructions for freezing?
Freeze cooled portions in aluminum foil and plastic wrap with the date labelled on the outside for up to 4 weeks. Enjoy Jeri!
My kids helped with this and they all loved it! We used some of the pasta water to thin the pizza sauce. Will definitely make again.
I made this tonight for dinner and we all thought it was great. The only problem is that most pasta here comes in 16 ounces so I increased the sauce and oregano and put it in a lasagna pan rather than a 9×13 since there’s more then the pan can hold due to the amount of pasta.I also added more cheese. I will definitely make again and added some black olives for mushrooms.
So I had some leftover pizza ingredients and thought about making some kind of pizza pasta bake. Searching online, I found several recipes, but this one seemed the most interesting to me — the base recipe is loaded with so much more flavor than the other recipes I found. I made the recipe last night with a few adjustments. (1) Since most pasta is not packaged in 12 oz boxes (at least not in my local grocery stores), I chose to use a full 16 oz box and proportionally increased the sauce, garlic, and oregano accordingly. (2) I used pizza sauce only — Rao’s Margherita Pizza Sauce, which is extremely flavorful and thicker than many jarred pasta sauces. (3) I have nothing against ground beef and Italian sausage, but I chose to use one pound of hot Italian chicken sausage instead. (4) And yes, I still added a heaping tablespoon of crushed red pepper, which did not make the final result too terribly spicy. (5) I also added sliced black olives and sliced mushrooms (jarred not fresh, and well-drained). (6) And once the sauce mixture was fully prepared, I stirred in about 3/4 of a cup of pasta water because the mixture was particularly thick. (7) Before pouring the mixture over the cooked Cellentani pasta in my large lasagna pan, I grated a healthy portion of Parmesan cheese over the pasta. (8) And finally, I cooked the dish for 45-50 minutes, making sure the cheese was darkly browned but not burned. The final result was very, very tasty. I highly recommend this recipe! As Holly indicates, the recipe is easy to adjust so you can easily use ingredients that suit your pizza taste.
Sounds delicious Jason! So glad you loved how delicious and versatile this recipe is!
Outstanding! Felt like a real mom tonight with this winner of a recipe. Picky eaters here and it was gobbled up. I followed the recipe exactly as published (adding pizza sauce -1 jar instead of sauce that was mentioned in the recipe notes) and had frozen onions and peppers -cooked up perfectly. I’m just sticking to your recipes from now on -can always count on them to be terrific. Thank you for all that you do!
Going to try the pizza bake looks good
Good recipe though I highly highly highly, cant say it enough, highly recommend not rinsing pasta, stripping the pasta of the starches that helps sauce stick to it nicely. Pasta much better served not rinsed.
I tried this tonight and rinsed thoroughly with cold water -it was perfect. Not sure what could be different but just wanted to mentioned it worked great.
Delicious & easy to make. Will definitely make it again!
I ‘ve been making this for many years and I’ll give you a helpful hint. Do not put the pepperoni in when you’re starting to Brown the beef. It is best to wait till beef is 90% Brown and then put the pepperoni in just for a very short time. All you want to do is warm it up. If you put the pepperoni in at the same time you put the raw beef the pepperoni lose all its flavor. If you want to taste the pepperoni inside the casserole do it at the very very end of Browning the meat. Plus I mix my pasta &meat sauce together, then put in pan this way it’s all evenly distributed.you can always add a little dot here & there of more sauce. Before you put the cheese and pepperoni pieces on the top and bake.
Great tip Cindie, thank you for sharing!
Great recipes
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