Step away from the packet mix with this recipe for tuna pasta bake!
I’ve been making a conscious effort to be healthier and save money on my food bill for about 5 years now. I have always enjoyed cooking but there were a few things that I believed I couldn’t quite crack, or were just too much hassle to bother doing myself when there was a great packet mix or sauce in a jar out there. I kidded myself that as there was only really four things that this applied to (pesto, stew, tuna pasta bake, curry) and I had them only once a month it wasn’t going to do me too much harm.
Then when I went all in with the healthy living in January for my 30 days I found that I really did need to crack some of these things. Packet mixes and sauces are not too bad in Britain, they do not include artificial flavours, colours or preservatives that you may find in other countries, but they are still not ideal.
I have kind of cracked the stew, (even though my kids still don’t like it), what follows is a great pasta bake recipe and my challenge for this month is to nail a curry made from scratch. No one makes there own pesto anyways, do they?
Tuna Pasta Bake
(I’ll add that although this epiphany came to me whilst doing the 30 days, this recipe is certainly not 30 days friendly!!!! But it is cheap to make and very kid friendly, so one for the maintenance plan!)
2 tins of tuna
1 pack of passata (or a can of tinned tomatoes and some tomato puree)
Wholewheat pasta
1 onion
2 peppers
3 handfuls of spinach
2 packets of plain crisps
Cheddar cheese, grated
Chop the onion and peppers and cook until starting to soften in a large pan, roughly chop the spinach and add that in. From the photo I think I snuck in a courgette too!
Pu the pasta on to cook.
Cook until the spinach wilts and then add the tuna, passata and season. You can add some herbs here too, dry or fresh.
Add in the pasta,
Put all of this in an oven proof dish. Crush the packet of crisps to crumble the crisps (it’s a good idea to open them first or it will explode!!!), sprinkle them on the top on the pasta mixture and top with the grated cheese.
If you are making this ahead of time you can leave it like this for a couple of hours (not much longer or the crisps go soggy) and then oven cook it to warm it through. If you have just made it then you can put it under the grill until the cheese goes nice and bubbly.
I was then so excited about eating this that I forgot to take a photo when it was fresh out of the oven, so no Pinterest worthy finished product photo, sorry! This will have to do!
This is full of yumminess but lots of things that aren’t great for me personally, (pasta, crisps and cheese), but I counteracted that by having a small portion on a side plate and having a salad with it.
The kids and hubby ate huge plate fulls.
It is freezer friendly if you are lucky to have any left, and can be defrosted and then warmed up in the microwave.
Hope you enjoy it, post some photos in the Facebook group when you make it!
