Skillet Mostaccioli
Baked pasta rebuilt for one pot: sausage crumbles, tomato powder, and cheese stirred in at the end.
- calories
- 780
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 130
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 20 min
- water
- 700 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Backpacking
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Penne or rigatoni | 6 oz | short shapes cook more evenly than long ones |
|---|---|---|
| Shelf-stable Italian sausage | 5 oz | a vacuum-sealed dry sausage, diced; or freeze-dried sausage crumbles |
| Tomato powder | 1/3 cup | stands in for a jar of marinara |
| Dried minced onion | 2 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Dried oregano | 1 tsp | |
| Dried basil | 1 tsp | |
| Crushed red pepper flakes | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt and black pepper | 1/2 tsp each | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Low-moisture mozzarella | 2 oz | the shelf-stable stick kind, diced |
| Grated parmesan | 1/4 cup | the dry shaker kind keeps for weeks |
Method
- Bring 700 ml of water to a boil. Add the pasta and the sausage together and cook at a low boil, stirring often so nothing welds to the bottom.
- When the pasta is just short of soft, about 9 minutes, kill the heat. Do not drain. The water is the sauce.
- Stir in the tomato powder, onion, garlic, herbs, pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. It will look thin. Give it two minutes to thicken.
- Add the oil and the diced mozzarella. Stir until the cheese has gone stringy and disappeared into the pasta.
- Shower the parmesan over the top, put the lid on for a minute, and eat straight from the pot.
The oven version bakes because it needs the top layer to brown. You cannot brown anything on a canister stove, so the browning is gone and the rest stays. What is left is a pasta cooked in exactly the water it needs, thickened by its own starch, with tomato powder doing the job a jar of marinara did at home.
Measuring the water matters more than usual. Too much and you have soup with cheese floating in it; there is no colander out here to fix that. Undercook the pasta by a minute before you add the powder — it keeps absorbing while the sauce sets up, and mushy is the failure mode. Low-moisture mozzarella and dry parmesan are the only cheeses worth carrying; fresh mozzarella is mostly water and will not survive a warm afternoon in a pack.
Packing
Pasta in one bag. Tomato powder, dried onion, and all the seasonings premixed in a second small bag so you dump once. Sausage and cheese ride together in a third, away from anything you mind smelling like sausage.
Variations
- Freeze-dried spinach or mushrooms, a handful, added with the pasta.
- No sausage: double the parmesan and add a scoop of textured vegetable protein with the pasta.
- A tablespoon of powdered milk with the cheese makes it creamier and less sharp.
https://domesticsuperhero.com/web-stories/the-tastiest-baked-mostaccioli-recipe