Chicken & mushroom pasta bake | Jamie Oliver recipes (2024)

FAQs

How to cook chicken thighs in Jamie Oliver? ›

Cut each chicken thigh into three strips and place in a bowl. Rub the meat all over with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper, then toss. Heat a large frying pan, big enough to hold all the chicken pieces snugly in one layer, and put the chicken into the pan, skin side down.

It's so easy and inexpensive to make your own, but if you're pushed for time, any shop-bought tomato-based pasta sauce will be fine. I will admit to using these quite regularly! Just check the ingredients list first – it should be short and all ingredients should be recognisable!

Cornstarch: Make a slurry of half water, half cornstarch and whisk until smooth. Cornstarch is a powerful thickener, so start by whisking in no more than 1 tablespoon of the mixture per 2 cups of simmering sauce; stir and simmer for 2 minutes, check the thickness, and repeat with more slurry as needed.

Cover the dish lightly with tin foil and bake it for 35 minutes. Make sure that the foil is not touching the cheese. Bake uncovered for another 10 to 15 minutes. The center should be bubbly and heated through.

And precooking the pasta, even halfway, takes work and dirties a large pot and colander. Then again, if you don't precook the pasta and instead add it dry to the sauce for baking, it will take much longer to become tender in the oven, even as it absorbs all the liquid in the sauce. Dry pasta needs to hydrate.

When making a pasta bake I personally like to cover for the first part of the cooking and then uncovered for long enough to brown the cheese. I cover with a layer of baking paper and then foil as the baking paper prevents the cheese from sticking.

Unlike chicken breasts, chicken thighs and drumsticks actually become more tender the longer they cook. That's because of their makeup. Dark meat has an abundant amount of connective tissue, which dissolves into gelatin as the meat cooks, rendering it juicy and tender.

The best oven baked chicken thighs start with seasoning! A blend of garlic powder, paprika, onion powder, salt and fresh cracked pepper brightens up plain old chicken thighs and adds wow-worthy flavor. But I know you are wondering– should you cover chicken thighs when they are baking? The simple answer is, no.

As mentioned above, overcooked chicken is the most common reason for rubbery chicken because the chicken loses moisture as it cooks. Checking the internal temperature of the chicken is the best way to avoid this.

Most pasta bake recipes require you to pre-boil your pasta until it's not quite cooked through and then finish it in the oven. But for days when you can't face another pot to wash up or just need something delicious and comforting but minimal effort…well this is the recipe for you!

Do you have to pre boil pasta for pasta bake? ›

Most baked pasta recipes instruct you to boil the noodles until cooked halfway before baking them. This allows the pasta to finish cooking in the oven as it bathes in the sauce.

For Baked Pasta Dishes

As for picking the perfect pasta shape, we recommend choosing a short cut—like Penne, Shells or Rigatoni—with hollow middles, twists or scoop-like shapes to capture all the goodness of your baked pasta: sauces, small ingredients and melty cheeses galore.

You can swap the lasagna noodles for a thin layer of pasta of your choice, such as penne or even macaroni, but this will transform the dish into a layered pasta bake. It will have a decidedly different texture than lasagna and likely won't cut quite as neatly.