Beef Bean Pasta Bake

5 from 16 votes

Beef Bean Pasta Bake. A family favourite with rich tomato passato sauce, Italian herbs, beef, bean, pasta to bake to perfection!

Prep Time15

Cook Time15

Total Time30

Course: Dinner

Cuisine: Australian, International, Italian

Keyword: beef bean pasta bake, beef bean pasta casserole

Servings:

Calories: 578kcal

Preheat oven to 200°c/400°F,gas 6
Spray a baking dish with cooking oil (Note 3)
Bring a medium saucepan to the boil, add a dash of olive oil, the macaroni (pasta) and cook to packet instructions (usually 8 mins) Then drain and set aside.
At the same time add a splash of olive oil to a frying pan, bring to a medium heat, add the beef mince, season with salt and pepper, Italian herbs and cook until browned, reduce heat
Add the red kidney beans and the celery to the beef mixture, stir all ingredients until well combined.
Slice celery into thin pieces
Pour the tomato passata, condensed tomato soup, crushed tomatoes onto the browned beef.
Sprinkled grated cheese over the dish sparingly and oven bake the pasta dish until the cheese melts (approximately 10-15 mins)
Garnish with parsley (Note 4)

Note 1: There is room for error in over cooking the pasta. If in doubt, have it be a little under not over. ie Also cooking it to the packet directions will help. It will then cook further in the oven. (Have a few little taste testers of it along the way to get it to your liking).
Note 2: One thing I have changed slightly in the recipe is that I no longer slab over a great wad of cheese like we did growing up. These days, I lower the amount I use and spread it out more (it's good for the hips)
Note 3: Don't worry about lining the dish with alfoil or baking paper. They would break apart and you would have mouthfuls of it each spoon you took of the dish. The oil is plenty to stop the sticking (trust me, I hate cleaning at the best of times. Well, to be honest, I hate cleaning always, haha, but TRUE!).
Note 4: I can never manage to grow parsley for too long before it frazzles, so I use dried herbs which work perfectly well!
I use mozzarella cheese as it is stringy and melts well. Any regular grated cheese will do fine though as it more cost effective for the family budget.
This makes a large size meal. I am being conservative in saying 6, it could well feed 8 adults. I used 2 small baking dishes, you can also use 1 large one. The sizes I use are: Small baker: 28 x 17.5 x 5 cm (shown in the photos) or Large baker: 33 x 22.5 x 5 cm.