Cheesy pasta bake

Ingredients - 4 portions

• 400 grams of your preferred pasta

• 900 grams of pasta sauce (I recommend 450 grams of Dolmio Sauce for Pasta bake, creamy tomato, and 450 grams of any chunky vegetable pasta sauce for a slight acidic tinge)

• 250 grams of beef mince

• Cheese: Amount depends on oven tray shape and depth you are using. You can use any cheese you have, but I recommend a mixture of cheddar and red leicester.

• 1 tablespoon of mixed Italian herbs

• 2 cloves of garlic

• Dash of salt

• Dash of pepper

• 1 stem of spring onion

• 3 tablespoons / 54 millilitres of light soy sauce

• 1 tablespoon / 18 millilitres of dark soy sauce (Optional)

• 3 closed-cap brown mushrooms (Optional)

• 1/2 a broccoli (Optional)

• 1 large carrot / 2 small carrots (Optional)

• Drizzle olive oil (Optional)

Since this recipe should be university student friendly, there are a lot of optional ingredients which you don't need to add. However, its always nice and healthy to add in some veggies!

Instructions

Preparation

Step 1 and 2 can be skipped if you add the listed ingredients in step 1 directly into the heated pan.

1. Put your 250 grams of beef mince in a bowl and add in: 1 tablespoon of Italian mixed herbs, a dash of salt, a dash of pepper, 3 tablespoons of light soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

2. Wearing food safe gloves, mix the beef mince together well until all of the meat has a brown tint from the soy sauce. (This is done to remove the game scent from the meat.)

3. Dice all of the follow ingredients: 2 cloves of garlic, 1 stem of spring onion, 3 closed-cap brown mushrooms, and 1 large carrot / 2 small carrots.

4. Preheat the oven to 175*C / 150*C fan.

Cooking

1. Heat a pan on high heat and drizzle a small amount of olive oil on. (Any preferred cooking oil is fine)

2. While waiting for the pan to heat up, put your 900 grams of pasta into a pot and fill with water until all of the pasta is submerged. Heat the pot up with maximum heat until the water is boiling then turn the heat down to medium.
   (You can also boil a kettle to speed up this process)

3. Add a dash of salt into the pasta.

4. When the pan is hot, put the beef mince in and break apart into small pieces.

5. When the beef mince is beginning to completely lose its pink colour and become the greyish cooked colour, add in all of your diced ingredients, garlic, spring onion, mushrooms and carrots. Drain the oil which comes from the beef mince (drain into a container for use in another recipe).

6. Mix everything in the pan to evenly spread the heat, and stir the pasta in the pot occasionally to prevent sticking or overflow.

7. Turn the heat for the pan down to medium, then add the 900 grams of pasta sauce into the pan. Scrape the remainder sauce out with a spoon, not with water.

8. Stir the pasta sauce until all the ingredients are well mixed in the sauce.

9. When the pasta is done (to your softness preference), drain the pasta using a colander, strainer, sieve, or just tipping the pot while holding the lid slightly ajar.

10. If your sauce is not yet heated up, run the pasta under hot water and stir a drizzle of olive oil through it to prevent sticking while waiting for the sauce.

11. When the sauce is heated, add all the pasta into the pan and stir through until everything is coated with sauce.

12. When the pot is freed up from the pasta, boil the broccoli. You can just use cold water in the pot, or boil the kettle to heat up the water faster first.

13. After everything is coated in sauce, start spooning the pasta into a baking tray, layering your preferred cheese between pasta layers. Leave the top layer as pasta for now. (I do pasta, the two cheeses, pasta, two cheeses, pasta.)

14. Bake the pasta on the middle oven shelf so the cheese can melt first.

15. When the top of the pasta bake has started to harden, add a final layer of cheese (I prefer just using cheddar for the white cheese to contrast the red sauce), and bake on the top shelf until the cheese has melted.

16. After taking the pasta bake out, let it rest for a few minutes before eating. Careful, it is extremely hot, especially the melted cheese!

17. Leftover pasta in the pan can be used for another bake, or you can stir in some cheese at low heat and have it as just cheesy pasta.

Storage

Leftover pasta which has not been eaten from can be wrapped in clingfilm and stored in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Always remember to spoon out the portion you want with a clean spoon into a separate container to microwave and heat up to prevent contamination with the larger leftover batch.