Oven Baked 5-Ingredient BLT Pasta

This oven-baked BLT pasta is everything you love about a classic BLT sandwich — smoky bacon, juicy tomatoes, and crisp lettuce — tossed with cheesy pasta and Baked in one dish. It comes together with just five real ingredients, and the whole thing is weeknight easy. The crispy lettuce goes on at the very end, which sounds a little odd, but trust me on that one.

Why You’ll Love This

• Just 5 real ingredients — plus a few pantry basics you already have on hand.
• One baking dish, minimal cleanup — everything goes in together and comes out ready to serve.
• Tastes Like a BLT in pasta form — warm, jammy tomatoes, crispy bacon, and cool crunchy lettuce all in one bite.
• Easy enough for a weeknight — no complicated steps, no standing over the stove, no drama.
• Crowd-pleaser every time — the kind of comfort food that disappears fast and gets requested again.

A Few Notes on Ingredients

The bacon matters. I know everyone says that about everything, but thick-cut really does make a difference here — it stays meatier in the bake rather than crumbling into little nothing pieces. I’ve done regular-cut bacon in a pinch and it’s fine, it’s just less satisfying to bite into.

The tomatoes — I almost always use cherry tomatoes when they’re good, which is June through August, and then I switch to a can of diced tomatoes for the rest of the year without any guilt whatsoever. Both work. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad about using canned tomatoes. My neighbor down the street grows heirloom tomatoes and brings them over sometimes and yes, those are amazing in this, but a can of Rotel is also amazing in this and nobody needs to know.

For pasta, I like penne or rotini because they hold the sauce and cheese in all the little crevices, but honestly I’ve made this with bowties, shells, even elbows once when that was all I had. Short pasta. That’s the rule. Long noodles are wrong for this.

The lettuce goes in after baking. I know that sounds strange. You’ll trust me.

Ingredients

• 8 ounces short pasta — penne, rotini, shells, whatever you’ve got
• 8 ounces thick-cut bacon, chopped into rough pieces (I use kitchen shears, easier than a knife)
• About 2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, halved — or one can of diced tomatoes, well-drained
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella, divided (mild cheddar works too, or whatever blend is in the fridge)
• 2 cups romaine or iceberg lettuce, chopped and very well dried
• Salt, pepper, a splash of milk if things look dry, nonstick spray for the dish

Let’s Make It

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Get your glass baking dish — I use a 9×13 — and spray it or wipe it with a little oil. Don’t skip this. I’ve skipped this. You end up scraping cheese off the bottom of the dish for twenty minutes.

Boil the pasta, but pull it a couple minutes before the package says it’s done. It’ll finish in the oven and if you cook it all the way through first, you end up with mushy pasta, which is nobody’s idea of a good time. Salt your water generously — more than you think. This is the Only chance the pasta has to get seasoned all the way through.

While the pasta is going, cook your bacon in a big skillet over medium heat until it’s crispy. Not chewy. Crispy. I cannot stress this enough because chewy bacon in pasta is a textural disappointment that will haunt the dish. Transfer it to a paper towel-lined plate. Here’s the thing I always tell people and half of them ignore: leave just a thin film of that bacon grease in the pan and cook your tomatoes in it. Two or three minutes over medium heat, just until they soften a little and start to give up their juice. It sounds like a small step. It is a small step. It makes the whole dish taste more coherent somehow, like everything belongs together.

Season those tomatoes with a pinch of salt and pepper while they’re hot.

Now — big bowl. Dump in your drained pasta, your bacon, your tomatoes with all the juices from the pan, and about one and a half cups of the mozzarella. Stir it around. If it looks dry (and sometimes it does, depending on the tomatoes), splash in a tablespoon or two of milk. Taste it. Season it. This is your moment.

Spread everything into the baking dish, sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top, and cover loosely with foil — tent it so the foil doesn’t press down and stick to the cheese. Bake for 15 minutes covered, then pull the foil and bake another 10 to 15 minutes until the cheese is golden in spots and the edges are bubbling.

While it bakes, deal with the lettuce. Chop it, then pat it very dry with paper towels or a clean kitchen towel. This is not optional. Wet lettuce will steam and make things watery and sad. The drying is important.

When the dish comes out, let it rest for five minutes — this is the hardest part, because the whole kitchen smells incredible by now — and then scatter the lettuce over the top. You can fold it in gently with a spatula if you want some of it to wilt against the hot pasta, or you can leave it as a layer on top and let everyone mix their own portion. Both ways work — it just depends on how much crunch you’re after.

Serve it right from the dish. Big spatula. Make sure everyone gets some of everything on their scoop.

Variations

My daughter makes this with turkey bacon when she’s trying to be “better,” her word, and she adds a handful of frozen corn she doesn’t even bother to thaw first and it actually works. I tried a version once with ranch dressing stirred in before baking — just a quarter cup or so — and it was very good in a different way, creamier and tangier, though it does officially add an ingredient and break the five-ingredient thing if you’re counting. I’m usually not.

If you want to stretch it for a crowd, make a pan and a half’s worth of pasta and just use a bigger baking dish, or two dishes. The ratios are forgiving.

Kids who hate lettuce — and there are many — can have theirs without. Put the lettuce on the side. Nobody needs a meltdown over leafy greens.

Leftovers

This keeps in the fridge for about three days, covered. Reheat it in the oven at 350°F for maybe 15 minutes if you want the cheese to get crispy again, or just microwave individual portions if you’re practical about it. The lettuce doesn’t store well once it’s mixed in, so if you know you’ll have leftovers, add the lettuce only to the portion you’re serving and keep the rest plain.

I’ve left this on the counter too long exactly once, got distracted by a phone call that went on forever, and I felt terrible about it but I didn’t die. Still — try to refrigerate it within two hours. Food safety. My mother’s voice in my head.

Also — and I learned this the hard way — do not set the hot glass dish directly on a wet or cold counter. Towel or trivet first. Glass can crack and that is a whole thing you do not want to deal with when you’re trying to get dinner on the table.

Once you make this, it has a way of making it onto the regular rotation. Fair warning.