Freezer-Friendly Veggie Pasta Bake

Most weeknights, it can feel like it’s almost impossible to get a healthy meal on the table, between everyone’s schedules and different activities. And on top of finding time to cook, you have to find something everyone wants to eat! Between picky eaters and tight schedules, what’s a home chef to do? The answer isn’t to run to the nearest fast food drive-thru – it’s to use your freezer! When you have healthy options for dinner ready to heat and eat in advance, it’s so much easier to get nourishing food on the table in a flash. The best part about freezer meals is not only can you pop them in the oven at your convenience, but your family members can help get dinner on the table too! After all, few things are easier than opening the refrigerator, turning on the oven and setting a timer.

You may have purchased freezer meals or freezer pasta like Stouffer’s before. And hey, if buyer dinners like that helps you gather around the table with your family at mealtime, we stand with you! While heating up a frozen tray of Stouffer’s lasagna takes literally seconds of meal prep, so does a tray of your own – and you’re in control of all the ingredients, as store-bought frozen dinners are often packed with things like sodium and preservatives. Nothing against Stouffer’s, but if you have the time to whip up this veggie bake, we promise it’s worth it!

A lot of folks like to stock their freezers through marathon meal prep sessions on the weekend, and it’s great if you can fit that in. But if devoting an entire day to cooking and doing dishes feels too overwhelming – or if you just don’t have the freezer space – there’s another way to go about filling your freezer, which is simply one dish at a time. Next time you make your family’s favorite freezer-friendly dish, double it and put half in a freezer-safe container. Slowly, but surely, your freezer will fill up with dinners that your family loves to eat, without much more work or dishwashing than you’d normally spend to cook dinner. Just make sure you date your freezer meals and review how much you have stocked up every month or so, to account for anything that might be getting old: Year-old casserole usually gets transferred into the trash, instead of hungry bellies! You can also check recipe information to see how long things will last.

This vegetable pasta bake is a great freezer-friendly, healthy recipe to get you started. It’s vegetarian—making it perfect for Meatless Monday—but still feels hearty and filling, thanks to the many veggies and healthy whole grains. The leftovers heat up so well that you’ll want to bring them to work as your bag lunch!

It’s sure to please even the pickiest eaters in your family. And if you needed another reason to make it, it’s so deliciously cheesy that your family will ask for it month after month. Who doesn’t love a warm bowl of cheesy pasta?! Enjoy!

Freezer-Friendly Vegetable Pasta Bake

Now, let’s talk about this delicious, easy, cheesy pasta bake. While most traditional starchy pasta dishes lay on the carbs, this one is lightened up and made healthier with whole grain pasta and a full serving of veggies for each person (you might even get two full servings of vegetables, depending how much you eat). Let’s review all the ways we lightened up this pasta dish, and ideas to make it your own!

Whole Wheat Pasta

We recommend using a shorter pasta that’s made from whole wheat flour for this dish, like farfalle, penne or ziti. (Ziti, a tube-shaped pasta, might not be the best choice, because it’s hard for veggies to sneak inside its shape. But if ziti is all you have on hand, go for it!) If you like, you can also use smaller shells. However, we wouldn’t recommend using lasagna noodles. While it’s hard not to think of a baked pasta dish as lasagna, you won’t want to use lasagna noodles for this dish, as it’s better when the veggies are all mixed together, instead of layered. 

If you’re gluten-free and traditional pasta doesn’t work for you, we’d recommend trying rice noodles, sweet potato noodles, or your favorite gluten-free pasta, such as rice flour pasta. Just remember to check the information on the label for artificial ingredients! If you really want to pack in your servings of vegetables, vegetable noodles are a great way to do that.

Fresh Vegetables

You almost wouldn’t believe how nutrition-packed this dish is! In fact, you’re basically eating pasta with a side salad. Between zucchini, green bell pepper, onion and spinach, you’re going to hit your Percent Daily Value (DV) for tons of nutrients. Half a cup of spinach alone packs in 90% of your DV for Vitamin K!

If you have most, but not all, of these vegetables in your kitchen, due to seasonality or otherwise, no worries! You can definitely add some variety based on a review of what’s in your fridge or grocery cart. For example, if you don’t have green peppers, red bell peppers or yellow peppers would be equally tasty. Feel free to change up the color of your peppers, depending what’s on sale. Have a bowl of cherry tomatoes lurking in the back of your fridge? Throw them in for extra tomato flavor!

While we’re on tomatoes, one thing we should note is that you’ll want to buy your regular name brand of spaghetti sauce for this recipe. Other veggie pasta bakes might call for tomato sauce, tomato puree or tomato paste, but we wanted to keep this one super simple!

If you’re really low on veggies but still want to make this pasta bake, we have a couple of suggestions for you. Not all vegetables cook the same way on the stovetop, but some roasted vegetables, like carrots, broccoli or cauliflower, would be a tasty addition. Just know that roasting vegetables might add some extra time to your meal prep. You can always boil or steam broccoli and cauliflower in the microwave for a softer texture, and to save time, but this technique doesn’t work well with carrots.

In addition to vegetables, you have the option to season with herbs if you want to add more flavor. We use a pretty basic combination of flavors in order to appease all the palates in your pack, but if you have herbs like oregano, parsley or basil on hand, they can be a delicious way to add extra flavor. Just make sure you’re not pulling every spice out of your window box planter – accidentally swapping cilantro for oregano isn’t going to get you a five-star review!

Protein

We love that this meal is plant-based without any meat, but if you need to pack a bit more protein, you could mix in rotisserie chicken. If you’re not a fan of chicken, you can also shop for pasta that’s made from beans, like chickpeas, for extra protein. You could even mix cooked beans into this dish, but we didn’t test that ourselves, so we can’t make any taste or texture guarantees!