- I recently made Ina Garten's baked rigatoni with lamb ragù from her new cookbook.
- The pasta recipe tastes like a cross between a bolognese and baked ziti.
- While the prep takes a lot of work, Garten says you can make part of the recipe a day in advance.
Ina Garten's baked rigatoni with lamb ragù is the newest recipe in her repertoire of comforting pasta dishes.
From a light summer garden pasta to a rich five-cheese penne, none of Garten's pasta dishes have ever disappointed me.
But her weeknight bolognese has always been my favorite, so I was excited to try a "Barefoot Contessa" red-sauce pasta recipe from her new cookbook, "Modern Comfort Food."
The big difference, though, is that Garten's weeknight bolognese cooks in 30 minutes, making it the perfect dinner for a busy work day, while her baked rigatoni and lamb ragù takes over an hour. Would the extra effort be worth it?
I decided to find out.
Garten's baked rigatoni with lamb ragù includes red wine, two types of cheese, and a lot of veggies.
To make Garten's comforting pasta dish, you'll need:
- 1 pound ground lamb
- 1 pound rigatoni (Garten recommends De Cecco)
- 1 can crushed tomatoes (such as San Marzano)
- 1 pound fresh mozzarella
- ½ cup freshly-grated Italian parmesan cheese
- 2 ½ cups dry red wine (Garten recommends Chianti or Côtes du Rhône)
- ⅔ cup heavy cream
- 2 extra-large eggs
- 3 large carrots
- 1 medium fennel bulb
- 1 large yellow onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley
- 1 tablespoon whole fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Before we got to work on the ragù, we began prepping all our vegetables.
There's a lot to this recipe, so it might help to have a sous chef. I had my friend Zach, who loves making pasta, on hand to help me with this cooking project.
First, per Garten's instructions, I chopped my yellow onion and diced my carrots.
We also prepped the garlic, fennel, and fennel seeds.
Garten's recipe calls for the fennel to be diced and the garlic to be minced. She also recommends roughly chopping the fennel seeds.
Then we heated olive oil in a Dutch oven and began adding the ingredients.
First we added the onion, carrots, and fennel to the pot.
We sautéed the veggies for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until they began to brown.
Then we added the lamb, along with the garlic and fennel seeds.
We let the mixture cook for eight minutes, breaking up the lamb with a wooden spoon and stirring until it was no longer pink.
The room filled with a delicious scent as we threw in the rest of the sauce ingredients.
We added the tomato paste and two cups of red wine (I went with Chianti), along with the oregano, red pepper flakes, and some salt and pepper.
I also threw in the San Marzano tomatoes, which I crushed in the pot with a wooden spoon.
Then it was time to let our beautiful sauce simmer.
I brought the Dutch oven to a boil, then lowered the heat and let it simmer — partly covered — for 40 minutes.
Per Garten's instructions, I also stirred the sauce occasionally while it was cooking.
While the sauce was simmering, we prepped our rigatoni.
I brought a large pot of water to boil, added salt, and then threw in the box of rigatoni. Garten recommends cooking your noodles until they're "barely al dente."
After 40 minutes were up, it was time to add more red wine to the sauce.
I took the Dutch oven off the heat and stirred in the remaining half cup of Chianti.
While waiting for the pasta to finish cooking, we prepped the cheese.
Garten's recipe calls for half of the fresh mozzarella to be grated on a box grater and the other half to be sliced.
Grating mozzarella is no easy feat. We tried one of Zach's tricks — putting the cheese in the freezer for a bit to harden it — but the task was still a struggle, so we ultimately used a knife to chop up the rest.
Once the pasta was ready, we tossed in the eggs and cream.
First we whisked the eggs and cream together in a bowl, then added it to the rigatoni.
Then we added our mozzarella to the pasta and tossed everything in with the lamb ragù.
We threw in some more salt and pepper, per Garten's instructions, and then mixed everything together.
It was finally time for the last step as we transferred the pasta into a baking dish.
We sprinkled everything with parmesan cheese, then arranged the slices of mozzarella right on top.
The dish already looked delicious but, alas, we'd have to wait. We set the timer for 40 minutes and popped the dish in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Once our pasta was hot and bubbling, with that beautiful crust on top, we knew it was time to eat.
We took the baking dish out of the oven and sprinkled some parsley on top before serving it to our very excited — and hungry — friends, who thought it had been worth the wait.
The rich sauce had that comforting, traditional Italian taste thanks to the carrots and other vegetables — and it was packed with flavor. And the rigatoni noodles were perfect for capturing a nice helping of ragù with every single bite.
"The melted mozzarella on top of the lamb ragù added the perfect amount of creamy cheesiness, and the lamb was melt-in-your-mouth cooked to perfection," my friend Tyler said. "The sauce was so good."
"The dish reminded me of a cross between bolognese and a baked ziti!" my friend Sara added. "Definitely a labor of love but, to someone not cooking, highly worth it!"
My sous chef Zach also loved the taste, although he didn't agree that it was worth the extra effort.
"As Prue would say on 'The Great British Bake-off,' it was worth the calories — but I wouldn't say it was worth the time," he said. "While it was definitely fun cooking it, I think you could genuinely make a dish that was 90% as good with just focusing on the ragù and broiling the pasta, versus fully baking it."
The cooking process for Garten's baked rigatoni was definitely long, and I agree with Zach that the lamb ragù would make an incredible sauce even without the extra baking time in the oven. But one great thing about this dish is that Garten says you can actually make most of it a day in advance. Just follow all the steps for the ragù and refrigerate it, then bake it just before serving the next day.
And if you don't mind spending a lot of time in the kitchen, a few glasses of red wine and Garten's cooking Spotify playlist will definitely help the time go faster (I speak from experience).
We served Garten's baked rigatoni with lamb ragù alongside her "outrageous" garlic bread, and it was the perfect meal for a small dinner party.
Garten's "outrageous" garlic bread was so good, it almost stole the show from the lamb ragù. Everyone loved the crunchy exterior, and the lemon zest and parsley on top added a nice brightness to all that garlic.
"I could have eaten an entire baguette's worth of the garlic bread," Tyler said.
Overall, the two dishes were perfect comfort food — just as Garten's cookbook and her Instagram post about the recipe promised. And while winter may officially be over, I know I'll be craving that lamb ragù no matter the weather.
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