This Three Cheese Baked Penne Pasta casserole is an easy meatless meal that can easily be made ahead.
Three Cheese Baked Penne Pasta is an easy meatless dinner. Don’t worry about losing flavor because it’s made with lots of seasonings and tons of cheesy goodness.
[adthrive-in-post-video-player video-id=”CFSSINNa” upload-date=”2020-10-09T02:03:46.000Z” name=”Three Cheese Baked Penne Pasta” description=”This Three Cheese Baked Penne Pasta casserole is an easy meatless meal that can easily be made ahead.” player-type=”collapse” override-embed=”false”]There are a lot of reasons people choose to eat a meatless meal once or more times a week. Most people choose them for health reasons but they are also inexpensive. Making meatless meals are not only good for you but for you wallet too.
Of course a lot of people choose to take part in Meatless Monday as a part of the Lenten season. No matter your reasons for choosing a meatless meal this Three Cheese Baked Penne Pasta is a great one that everyone in your family love.
In a large pot prepare pasta according to the package directions. While the pasta is cooking it’s time to make the sauce. This is an easy sauce that’s built off a roux includes seasonings and cheese.
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Begin the sauce by melting three tablespoons of butter over medium high heat. Once the butter is melted, add garlic and seasonings whisking constantly for two minutes.
Next, add the flour to the mixture and continue to cook whisking constantly for about a minute. Add in milk and whisk to combine. Bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper and cool for about two minutes. Then add in cheeses and continue whisking for three or four minutes until sauce thickens.
Add cheeses to the mixture and combine.
Drain the pasta and transfer it to a greased 9×13 baking dish. Then pour an undrained can of tomatoes over the pasta and stir together.
Next pour sauce over pasta and tomatoes and toss together.
Sprinkle a little extra cheese over the top and bake for 25 minutes. At the end of that time you can remove the baked penne from the oven or you can turn up the broiler and cook for another 5 minutes to brown the cheese. You’ll get the best three cheese penne when you get the full printable recipe by clicking below!
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Baked 3 Cheese Penne Casserole
Ingredients
- 1 lb penne pasta
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 cup onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1/2 tsp basil
- 2 tsp all purpose flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup vegetable stock or chicken stock
- 1 14 oz can Italian style diced tomatoes
- 1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 1 cup parmesan cheese, shredded
- 1 cup asiago cheese, shredded
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350
- Prepare pasta according to package directions
- In a sauce pan over medium high heat melt three tablespoons of butter.Add onions and saute until translucent. Add garlic, Italian seasoning and basil to butter and stir
- Next, add flour to pot whisking constantly for two minutes
Add milk and stock to the flour and bring to a boilSeason with salt and pepper and remove from heat and cool for about two minutes until sauce thickensAdd cheeses to the mixture and stir to combine - While you wait for the cheese to melt drain the pasta and transfer into a 9×13 greased baking dish
- Pour an undrained can of tomatoes over the pasta
- Next, pour the sauce over of the pasta and then stir to combine
- Sprinkle a little extra cheese over the top and bake for 25 minutes
- If you want to make the cheese extra gooey turn on the broiler for 5 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown
Any suggestions for freezing?
Cover tightly before freezing. I freeze this recipe all the time.
This looks really delicious and I would like to make it for dinner tonight but in the video you add your “house blend seasoning” but it is not listed in your ingredient list nor in the directions. What is the amount of your house blend seasoning do you add to this dish?
You can find it here: https://www.itisakeeper.com/10427/house-seasoning-blend/
Hey Christina – great recipe!
Just a note – I ended up adding more flour to make the sauce a little thicker. I think it averaged out to about 1 tbsp instead of 2 tsp.
Making this again this week 🙂 Will become a staple in my recipe collection for sure!
Thank you so much for your feedback so happy to hear you enjoyed this!
Let me preface this with, I am not a very good cook. Just ask my husband 😉 but I just put this dish in the oven and the sauce didn’t turn out. The cheese just globbed up and never became a creamy sauce. I used an Italian cheese blend “mozzarella, smoke flavored provolone, Romano, parmesan, Fontana and asiago” because that’s what I had. Would this have made it not melt into a uniform sauce? Thank You! The RECIPE looks delish! 🙂
That’s odd…the packaged shredded cheese blends should melt nicely. I’m not sure why it didn’t work for you :/
Yes mine did this too! I transferred the sauce to the pot that had my pasta cooking (it was still really hot) and that melted the cheese down finally! Also I whisked like crazy! it almost got tacky/gummy..not sure what happened.. but it was better after I moved to a hotter pan rather than having the sauce cool slightly before adding.
Good to know thank you for your feedback!
Hi! When do you add the onions and oil? They are the ingredient list but not the directions. Thanks! ????
My apologies. The recipe is updated.
Great cheese recipe I have found on the web. Now, I can try it for my husband. Really thanks for sharing awesome cheese recipes.
Keep it up.
Freya
Thank you for the kind words 🙂 Enjoy!
In your 3 Cheese Penne recipe you mention to add milk but milk is not in the ingredients list and broth is listed in ingredients but not mentioned in the directions. How much milk is used and do you need the broth?
thank you.
The recipe has been updated and is now correct. Thanks for bringing this to my attention 🙂