My sister-in-law Natalie bought me a skillet last month. A real, old-fashioned cast iron skillet. Natalie knows about this stuff since she is from the south and still cooks with her grandmother’s skillets.
I’m excited to use this thing. A lot. I already roasted chicken in it and have made this cornbread a couple times. But now I am ready to start branching out and trying to make all kinds of stuff. Like this Skillet Baked Stuffed Rigatoni.
I am taking rigatoni pasta and stuffing it with a mixture of ricotta and goat cheese. Then I take those cute little stuffed noodles and made them bathe in tomato sauce.
Then I poured more over the top. Then sprinkled them with parmesan. Then I baked them up until they were a little crispy around the edges.
This is a perfect weeknight dinner. Because you can assemble it early in the day and stick it the fridge as is in the pan, and then baked it right before dinner.
I like to serve a vegetarian dinner at least once a week, but this baked pasta is so good that Pete didn’t even think about the fact that there was no meat involved. I think the goat cheese really pumps up the flavor, and I love any pasta swathed in tomato sauce…
*I used a pastry bag with to plain tip to pipe the cheese into the pasta. You just insert the tip into the noodle and squeeze until it fills it up. Also, make sure that the cheese is room temperature so that it is easy to pipe.
To make this dish, this is what you do:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the rigatoni and cook to 2 minutes shy of al dente. Drain them.
In a medium sized bowl, combine the ricotta cheese and the goat cheese and stir until well combined. Season with kosher salt and black pepper.
Put the cheese mixture in a pastry bag or Ziploc and snip the end off. Pipe the room temperature cheese into the rigatoni noodles.
Pour 1 cup on the bottom of a 10” skillet. Follow that with the basil leaves.
Line up all the noodles in concentric circles, 1 layer at a time.
When all of the noodles are in the pan. Pour the remaining sauce over the top of the noodles. Sprinkle the parmesan over the top of the sauce. (if you want to refrigerate, this is the point where you would do that).
Bake the pasta about 15 minutes until the edges are getting golden and the dish is very hot.
Serve hot!
Recipe: Skillet Baked Stuffed Rigatoni
Ingredients
- -1lb rigatoni pasta
- -8 ounces ricotta cheese
- -4 ounces goat cheese
- -Kosher salt
- -Fresh black pepper
- -3 cups marinara (or good quality store bought marinara)
- -1 handful fresh basil leaves
- -½ cup finely grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
- 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- 2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the rigatoni and cook to 2 minutes shy of al dente. Drain them.
- 3. In a medium sized bowl, combine the ricotta cheese and the goat cheese and stir until well combined. Season with kosher salt and black pepper.
- 4. Put the cheese mixture in a pastry bag or Ziploc and snip the end off. Pipe the room temperature cheese into the rigatoni noodles.
- 5. Pour 1 cup on the bottom of a 10” skillet. Follow that with the basil leaves.
- 6. Line up all the noodles in concentric circles, 1 layer at a time.
- 7. When all of the noodles are in the pan. Pour the remaining sauce over the top of the noodles.
- 8. Sprinkle the parmesan over the top of the sauce. (if you want to refrigerate, this is the point where you would do that).
- 9. Bake the pasta about 15 minutes until the edges are getting golden and the dish is very hot.
- 10. Serve hot!
Preparation time: 20 minute(s)
Cooking time: 25 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 6
Print Recipe
Brilliant!!! Cast iron is amazing. I inherited my mom’s and it makes the best chili ever. I use the skillet as a lid and it turns it into the most amazing slow stove top cooker.
I love it Vicki! I should make chili in mine this week!
This is just gorgeous, I loved that you piped the cheese into the pasta.
These stuffed rigatoni look so great! Super homey and comforting. Finally, a good use for pastry bags (we are a no-frosting household). 🙂
I love my cast iron pan!!! This looks yummy.
I am absolutely dying over thiiiiiiiiiis.
Thanks Bev!!
This goat cheese stuffed Rigatoni sounds so good!
Now this is my kind of pasta!! Love it all Heather 🙂 Have a great Monday! xoxo
This looks amazing! Can I come over for dinner?
I LOVE making and baking everything in my cast iron skillet! Something about the rustic look and feel just gives that dish a whole ‘down South’ feel 🙂 this pasta dish looks SO comforting and it needs to be on my plate!
I still don’t own a cast iron skillet (sad, I know)…think I could make this in a regular glass baking dish?
What a heavenly feast!! That is one gorgeous skillet dish.
Such a delightfully beautiful dish!!
It’s funny how things fall out of favor. I’ve had my cast iron skillet for years and kind of forgot about it. Only in the last few months have I started using it again. I don’t think I’ll ever go back!
Love the look of this skillet pasta Heather!
I was wondering how you stuffed the little rigatoni! Who doesn’t like some Italian comfort food every now and then? This sounds soooo yummy.
omg this looks like the best pasta dish ever! such a fun idea
Oh you are making me hungry! This looks SO good!!
This looks great, however, I was always taught to not cook tomatoes in cast iron. ‘They’re acidic and can leach iron out of the pan, leaving you with an metallic taste. You can use an enamel coated cast iron or really Pyrex would be best.
very interesting Debbie!I didn’t notice that but I will look into it. Thank you so much for the info!
This looks awesome!!
I’m totally salivating!
Love my cast iron skillet. I couldn’t do without it.
I haven’t made this in a long time but it is delicious and I also make it with other cheeses. I’ve made it with slices of American cheeses, and cut the cheese into little pieces and slip into the pasta, and you can can sprinkle some shredded cheese over the sauce and pasta if you like.
Heather – this sounds sound ridiculously delicious!
Debbie, I agree with your teacher, no acidic foods in cast iron. As a deep south purist, I treat my cast iron like it is cast gold. The magic of a well seasoned cast iron skillet can’t be replicated nor can it be reseasoned in a day, it takes years for the real magic to happen.
That rigatoni skillet has everything I need! Cooooome to momma!
This is looks delicious but I can definitely see myself having a tantrum piping filling into the individual rigatoni. I admire you 😛
I am making this it looks very good, and not expensive to make, maybe my teenage daughter might like it also.
Heather, this looks like cooking therapy for a rainy weekend (without the goat cheese, though, which is something my tastebuds simply cannot abide). I don’t use my cast iron skillet nearly enough, so thanks for the beautiful presentation which is enticing me to create such a masterpiece for those I love and cook for!
Culd I usse spagetti prego sac in sted of marinara sac..? Can I take the goat chese out be ok w/the ricotta or do I need to ad cream chese w/it in sted of goat chese..?
Yes you can use any kind of sauce that you want! And if I was going to take out the goat cheese, I woudl probably add some cream cheese to bulk up the texture of the ricotta. However, if you go ricotta alone, make sure you season it well!
1 lb of pasta was too much–I ran out of the cheese stuffing after only using about half the pasta (and i only had a layer and a half of pasta in the skillet). Any suggestions? This recipe was wonderful, otherwise!
Sorry Jill- that’s weird!? I guess just double the stuffing? or 1.5 it?
I take it the cheese stretched for the full pound of pasta when you made it?
The same thing happened to me!
I too ran out of cheese filling halfway through. The recipe doesn’t say to understuff; I filled mine completely. looking back at the recipe tho, the rigatoni only look half stuffed in the pics.
Is the goat cheese necessary? There’s nowhere to buy it where I live!
Hi Delasis- you could you ricotta instead!
Hi Heather. Just wanted to let you know placing a cast iron skillet in the frig with food is not a good idea.
It’s never a good idea to introduce a very cold CI skillet to a prewarmed oven. It can cause warping or worse.
Also to leave tomato sauce in CI for prolonged periods can destroy the beautiful black pantine Finnish that protects from rusting and makes the pan nonstick.
But your recipe sounds scrumptious and is on my list to make!
Thank you for all the info Gary!