Sausage and Bacon Pasta Bake With Caramelised Onions

Pasta bakes are great, they're filling, you can put near enough anything in them, and they can go a long way. With this, I'll be using the savoury sauce I made in a previous post. I'll let you know when you need it.

For this recipe you'll need:

Sausages

Bacon

Pasta (cooked)

Milk

Flour

Butter

A red onion

Wholegrain mustard

Cheddar cheese (grated)

Let's get started! After pre-heating the oven to 190°C, the first thing you'll need to do is cook the pasta. To work out how much you need, grab an oven-proof casserole dish, and fill two thirds of it with pasta. Pour this into a large pan, cover with boiling water and cook it until it's al dente (has some bite to it) - boil for about eight minutes. 

The reason for doing this is that when we put this in the oven, everything will carry on cooking. To avoid over-cooking the pasta, it'll need to be undercooked when we put it all together.

Chop the sausages and bacon up into rough chunks, and then thinly slice the onions. These need to be as fine as possible. But make sure they're in slices, not diced. We'll come back to these later on.

We now need to make the sauce I showed you how to make in the previous post. The savoury sauce is great, it can be used in a variety of dishes. We'll need a fair bit for this dish, so use the amounts I've used in the linked recipe.

While you're making this, it's time to test your multitasking skills...

The sauce needs constant attention, however... As you're cooking the sauce you'll need to fry up the bacon and sausages. cook them through, they wont take as long as they will to cook of they're whole, but make sure they're cooked right through. Move them often and keep them on a medium heat.

If the pasta is cooked before you're ready to use it, that's not a problem, drain it to stop it from cooking further, and then pour it into the casserole dish. This'll stop it from cooking even further.

Once the sauce is done, season it with salt and pepper and pour it into your stock pot/big pan. I definitely recommend getting one of these by the way! I think mine was about £15 from Tesco.

Anyway, I'm getting side tracked! Pour the seasoned sauce into the pan, and then add the cooked pasta. Give this a good stir and combine it. Mix it well so the sauce is oozing into the pasta.

Next, add the cooked sausages and bacon, and mix this in well too. Don't mix too hard, you don't want to break the pasta and meat. This dish is supposed to be chunky!

As great as this dish looks now, it can still taste a little bland. I'm going to use a trick I learned from my Mum (the woman is amazing, I love her!), she taught me how to bring flavour into this sauce without adding a lot to it.

Take some wholegrain mustard (trust me on this one!) and chuck two teaspoonfuls in. I'm not actually a fan of mustard, but it's not a strong flavour when combined with this dish. What it'll do is infuse a big flavour, when combined with one of my favourite ingredients... Cheese.

Stir the mustard in and then add some cheese. Add as much as you like without going overboard, and save some for the topping.

Season this with salt and pepper, and taste often until it's ridiculously delicious.

When this is done, put everything back into the casserole dish, top with cheese, and stick it in the oven for 25 minutes.

Now we can get started on the onions. I'm not even a massive onion fan to be honest, but these are wonderful. I'm a student, and 130 miles away from home. Home comforts make me a happy lad, and this is one my Mum used to do. 

Caramelised onions are incredibly easy to make and require very little effort. And conveniently, they take the same amount of time to cook as the pasta bake!

Take the thinly sliced onions (they really do need to be thinly sliced) and thrown them into a frying pan. Pour a small amount of oil into the pan, and a good knob of butter. Keep the pan on a very low heat. You can keep the heat up to get them started at first if you want, just make sure the heat goes back down once they're cooking.

The science behind this is really cool. Caramelised onions are named this way not because any sugar is added, but because when the onions are cooked like this on a very low heat, and for a long period of time, they release their own sugars. These sugars combine with the butter they are cooked in, and sweeten themselves.

As I said, they don't require a lot of attention, just a low heat and some stirring every now and again. First they'll tenderise, and then they'll start getting sweeter. These will be lovely. They'll have a savoury flavour to them, without a strong oniony taste. They'll still taste like onions, but they'll have a sweetness to them, too.

When the pasta bake is done, carefully take it out of the oven. If you'd like some, cook some veggies with it. No need to worry about the pasta bake going cold, it'll be piping hot, and there's no need to worry about over cooking the onions either, they can stay on a low heat for another 5 minutes or so.

I went for peas, they're easy and green!

When you're ready, serve up and enjoy!

Let me know how you get on with any of the meals I've posted, what you thought of them, any struggles, or suggestions! I'd really appreciate them, and they'll help me post even better dishes!

Enjoy!