Baked Rigatoni

The  rigatoni to the furnace is a tubular pasta dish like macaroni, but larger. It is a simple and very quick recipe to prepare. Like almost all preparations that involve pasta, it tends to be very versatile, allowing a wide variety of ingredients to be used in its preparation.

Keep in mind that pasta provides a lot of flour, so it is best to try to balance the ingredients to make it a little lighter. Although the important thing is a balance between the flavors, it is recommended that they be very strong, as they will compete with each other.

Baked rigatoni ingredients

• Rigatoni style pasta
• 1 chorizo
• Half a cup of mushrooms
• Tomato paste
• Olive oil
• Half a cup of cream
• White sauce
• Parmesan

Preparation

Depending on the amount of baked rigatoni that you are going to prepare, this will be the water you should use, normally one liter is used for each package of pasta. So that will be your base measurement.

The best thing is that you put the water to heat first and, once it is bubbling, you add the rigatoni, this way you save time and the pasta is much better. Leave them for about five minutes, just until they are al dente.

Once it reaches the optimum point, proceed to drain, go through cold water, drain again and reserve for later. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius. In a frying pan, heat two tablespoons of olive oil, when it is hot, add the chorizo ​​cut into slices and stir so that it browns evenly.

When the chorizo ​​begins to remove the extra fat, put the mushrooms, which you should have previously cut into slices, and proceed to sauté them.

After a few minutes pour in the tomato sauce, the white sauce and sprinkle with a little Parmesan cheese. Stir everything very well and proceed to incorporate the pasta, sauté it for a few minutes.

Put the pasta together with the other ingredients in a mold that is optimal for baking and cover everything with more béchamel sauce and a generous layer of Parmesan cheese. Put the mold in the oven and leave it there until you see that the cheese has gratin.

Then proceed to carefully remove the mold from the oven, let it cool for a few minutes, as the center should be very hot, and serve with a good wine, French bread and a tasty salad to enjoy your rigatoni in the oven.

Additional tips

• If you can’t get the rigatoni pasta, you can use the regular macaroni pasta, it won’t have any effect on the flavor, but it won’t look the same.
• You will know that your pasta is al dente, when when cutting it, you can see a line or white point on the inside while the outside is more yellow, although soft.

• Making the white sauce is very easy, you simply have to melt a square of butter over low heat and add a tablespoon of flour, then add a cup of milk, raise the heat to medium and stir until the milk thickens. You can also season it a little with salt and pepper. Depending on how thick you want it, you can add more or less flour.
• To achieve a perfect salty of the pasta, we recommend adding a tablespoon of salt for each liter of water.
• Do not put more than two tablespoons of oil to fry the chorizo, otherwise you will add an excessive amount of fat due to the oil that it removes.
• You can put slices of double cream cheese or mozzarella cheese on the pasta before putting it in the oven and waiting for the cheese to brown.