Suffering from spaghetti blues? Change up your routine with this cheesy meaty baked version.
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How to make Tuscan Chicken Spaghetti Pie
Serious Eating / Yvonne Ruperti
My family ate a lot of spaghetti when I was growing up. Of course there were always containers of leftover pasta in the fridge. Since reheating leftover spaghetti in the microwave gets boring and baking it is tasty but greasy my family turned spaghetti leftovers into a crispy baked pasta with cheese or spaghetti pie. Mix in grated parmesan and mild cheddar for a cheesy macaroni and cheese flavor add cooked ground chicken (to replace the beef my family used) to make it super meaty and bake it in the oven for a super crispy top. Why cheddar? The mild flavor works well with tomato and the texture becomes creamy instead of stringy. While this dish is ideal (or better) when made with pasta from the night before it’s easy enough to whip up in under an hour without using up leftovers.
When I set out to recreate this dish my first thought was to streamline it. Pre-cooking pasta seemed like a time-killer so I experimented with a technique of baking raw pasta directly in the sauce. For dishes like lasagna this works great: just add extra liquid to soak up the pasta. That wasn’t the case here. The delicate spaghetti strands became mushy and the sauce too starchy. Even freshly cooked pasta while less starchy baked too soft.
