Quick and Easy Pasta Dishes after a Long Day

If you are anything like me, after I get home from a long day at work or school, I don’t want to do anything but lay down and sleep. I also want to have a good, rewarding meal after all the work I’ve done. But at the same time, I don’t want to have to spend an hour cooking that meal. Ever since I was a kid, my favorite food has been pasta, and as I am getting older, I am finding new ways to customize pasta and create different pasta dishes all of the time.

Pasta is a dish that is universal and easy to customize to your liking. You can choose a pasta shape based on the sauce or even just based on any shape you like. One of our bloggers recently wrote about all of the different possibilities of different pasta shapes and finding the best ones for your pasta dishes. You can make a sauce based on how you are feeling. For example, you may want a cream sauce, lemony sauce, red sauce, or an oil-based sauce; these are all easy and customizable sauces to create.

When you have had a long day and the last thing that you want to do is stand over a stove and cook a meal, then these quick but delicious pasta dishes are for you. I am going to give you three different pasta recipes that are fast and easy to make and also simple to manipulate to your liking.

The first is a pasta dish that went viral on TikTok that is loved by so many for its simplicity and unique delicious favor. This pasta is also easy to customize and change up based on what you want and like to eat. The main parts of this pasta are the feta and the tomatoes, if you are someone who does not like feta, you can easily substitute this for a goat cheese, Boursin cheese, or any other soft creamy cheese. 

Baked Feta Pasta 

Scroll down for a printable version of this recipe

Yield: 4 servings

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

8 oz block of feta cheese

8 oz Cavatappi pasta or pasta of choice

2 pints cherry tomatoes

1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 400°.
2. In a baking dish, place the tomatoes and toss them in some of the Italian seasoning, salt, pepper and olive oil.
3. Create a space in the center of the dish and place the feta there surrounded by the cherry tomatoes, then coat again with the rest of the Italian seasoning, salt, pepper and olive oil.
4. Bake for 20 minutes, until the cherry tomatoes burst and are soft.
5. While the feta and tomatoes are baking, cook the pasta in a pot of well-salted water according to the package instructions. Drain and reserve about half a cup of the pasta water.
6. Once the feta and tomatoes are done, mix to combine and make the sauce.
7. Add the cooked pasta to the feta tomato mixture and toss, add in some of the reserved pasta water if the sauce is too thick.
8. Serve and enjoy!

This next pasta dish I will be sharing with you is a pasta that is very well known and something that a lot of us usually order at restaurants. But it's actually quick and simple to make at home. This pasta is the world-famous carbonara. It is a creamy, cheesy pasta that has bacon and all the flavors that so many find comforting in a dish.

Carbonara

Yield: 4 servings

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

2 large eggs and 2 large yolks

1/3 cup grated pecorino Romano cheese

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese

3 1/2 oz bacon, pancetta, or guanciale

12 oz long pasta of choice

Salt and pepper

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, yolks, pecorino, parmesan, salt and pepper.
3. Once water is boiling, add pasta and cook till al dente.
4. While pasta is cooking, in a large skillet over medium heat, add the pork, and sauté until the fat renders and edges get crispy. The remove it from heat and set aside.
5. Right before the pasta is ready reheat the pork, if needed, and reserve about a cup of the pasta water. Drain your pasta and add it to your skillet and stir for about a minute.
6. Add your pasta mixture to a bowl and stir in your eggs and cheese mixture. Add reserved pasta water if needed and serve immediately.

Our last pasta dish is a variation of pasta alla vodka that I love to make at home. This is a quick pasta that actually does not contain any vodka but still has that creamy tomato component that people know and love. The star ingredient of this pasta is ricotta cheese. Instead of cream that is used to make the standard pasta alla vodka, we are using ricotta to make it creamy. The vodka is not missed because of the depth that the ricotta brings to the dish. Almost every part of this dish is versatile, you can use any pasta shape you would like and your favorite tomato or red pasta sauce you like.

Creamy Ricotta Red Sauce Pasta 

Yield: 4 servings

Prep Time: 5 mins

Cook Time: 15 mins

Total Time: 20 mins

12 oz short pasta of choice

1/3 cup ricotta cheese

2 cups tomato pasta sauce of choice

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.
2. In a small pot, add in a small amount of olive oil.
3. Once warm, add in the tomato pasta sauce and bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer and season with salt and pepper.
4. Add in the pasta and cook till al dente.
5. Once the pasta is ready, reserve about half a cup of pasta water, and drain, add the pasta to your tomato sauce.
6. Stir the pasta for about 2 minutes to finish cooking on low heat.
7. Turn off the heat and stir in the ricotta cheese, immediately serve, and enjoy!

At The Chopping Block, we have design our classes to feature recipes that are easy to recreate at home and easy to customize to your liking, too! If you want to learn how to really amp up your pasta game, you should look into our pasta classes like our upcoming Hands-On Pasta Workshop and Hands-On Pasta Boot Camp that goes more in depth on making fresh pasta and so many different sauces.

All of us deserve a delicious meal after a long hard day, and I hope that after seeing how easy these recipes are, you now feel like you have some great options. These recipes are simple, delicious, and flexible, and are here for you to cook when you don’t feel like cooking!