Trying the baked feta pasta made famous on TikTok – and (spoiler alert) let me tell you, it’s worth the hype!!
While I’m not on TikTok, I’ve seen seen the baked feta pasta popping up all over Instagram for weeks now. It seems like the whole world is making this dish! The other day I was waiting in line at Trader Joe’s and I overheard a Trader Joe’s employee telling a woman that their brined feta blocks have been flying off the shelves because so many people are making this meal!
This dish is proof that the best meals are ones with the simplest ingredients. Growing up, and actually still to this day, one of my favorite meals was chicken souvlaki. My dad would grill seasoned chicken breasts, we’d heat up pitas, and form an assembly line so you can build your souvlaki with toppings. Our toppings would be chopped lettuce, tomatoes, kalamata olives…and feta.
As a kid, I never touched the feta or even thought about adding it to my souvlaki. Feta was, in my child’s mind, firmly in the category of “grown-up food” that I knew I wouldn’t like, even though I had never tried it. Mushrooms had the distinction of being top of the list in this category.
It wasn’t until I was older that I gave feta a whirl and it became a staple on my souvlaki and in salads to add some taste and texture.
And now baked feta pasta is on my list to make again because it was delicious!! I followed the recipe below, which yielded about 3 meals for me.
Ingredients:
2 containers, grape tomatoes
Trader Joe’s Greek Feta in Brine
1 lemon
salt + pepper
penne or linguine (I tried this recipe with both penne + Trader Joe’s hearts of palm pasta, worked out wonderfully with both pasta types)
Directions:
- Spray oven-safe dish with oil spray (I love Trader Joe’s avocado spray)
- Add grape tomatoes
- Toss with 1 tbsp oil, garlic, lemon zest, salt + pepper
- Place feta blocks in the middle
- Bake at 375 for 1 hour
- Prepare pasta + reserve 1 cup of pasta water
- Once feta is baked, mix + slowly add pasta water to the sauce as you mix. If you don’t, the consistency seemed more like a dip than a sauce
