Baked feta pasta: is the internet's favourite traybake worth the hype?

The idea is famously simple: roast a whole block of feta in a dish of cherry tomatoes, olive oil and garlic, then crush everything together and stir it through cooked pasta. Minimal chopping, one tray, a creamy sauce without any cream.

If you were online in early 2021, you couldn't miss it. Every feed was the same overhead shot: the white block, the blistered tomatoes, the spoon going in, the slow-motion collapse. The promise underneath all those videos was even more tempting than the food. Dinner that cooks itself, while you sit down.

So this one's been on our list for a while. Not because we doubted it would be tasty (tomatoes, cheese, garlic and pasta: it was never going to be terrible) but because "one tray and done" is exactly the kind of claim T likes to put on the stand.

We'll say it straight away: the basic idea is brilliant, and it deserved to go viral. Here's what we think it nails.

• The oven does the cooking. Twenty-odd minutes of hot, dry heat blisters the tomatoes until they slump and go jammy, and that concentrated, sweet-sharp juice is most of your sauce. You'd struggle to get the same depth from a tin of tomatoes in that time.
• Feta goes soft, not stringy. It won't melt like cheddar, and that's the point. Warm feta crumbles into the tomato juices and oil and turns into something that coats pasta like a loose, salty cream.
• It's forgiving. Ten minutes over? Fine. Slightly different tomatoes? Fine. For a weeknight dish, that matters more than anything.
• It looks like an event. Bringing a whole tray to the table and smashing the cheese in front of people is genuinely fun. Our nephew asked to do the smashing on the second go and was, frankly, very good at it.

Our first attempt was fine. Edible, cheerful, a bit flat. By the third, we'd made four changes that we think turn it from a fun video into a dinner you'd make again.

1. A bigger tin, and the tomatoes in one layer

S's first go was in our deep lasagne dish, because it was clean. The tomatoes were piled two deep, so instead of roasting they sat in their own juice and steamed. The sauce was thin and pinkish and tasted a bit like warm salad. A wide roasting tin, with every tomato touching the metal, fixed it completely. If you take one thing from this post, take that.

2. Less oil than you'd think

A lot of the versions doing the rounds online are very generous with the olive oil. We tried a big glug on test one and ended up with a puddle of orange oil at the bottom of every bowl. Three tablespoons across the whole tray is plenty, because the feta brings its own fat and the starchy pasta water does the rest of the job.

3. Something sharp and something green at the end

Feta and roasted tomatoes are both rich and salty-sweet. On their own, the third forkful tastes like the first. Lemon zest and a squeeze of juice, stirred in after the smash, wake the whole thing up. Then a big handful of torn basil. T would also like it on record that a few chilli flakes are not optional in our house.

4. A pinch of kalonji

This one came from T's mum, who watched us make it over a video call, squinted at the screen and asked why the cheese had nothing on it. Half a teaspoon of nigella seeds (kalonji) scattered over the feta before it goes in the oven toasts on top and gives you a little oniony, peppery crunch. It's what she puts on a lot of things, and she's usually right. It's optional, but we wouldn't leave it out now.

We cooked our version three times across two weekends at the end of August, plus one extra midweek tray because S wanted to try spaghetti (verdict below: don't). All in our fan oven, which an oven thermometer tells us runs about 10 degrees hot. S bought the thermometer specifically to win a separate argument about roast potatoes. That argument is still open.

• Test 1: one 200g block of supermarket Greek feta (in brine, drained), two punnets of cherry tomatoes, our deep lasagne dish, lots of oil. Steamed tomatoes, oily sauce. Fine on a plate, nothing to write home about.
• Test 2: same feta, a wide metal roasting tin, 3 tbsp oil, red onion wedges added. Much better. The tomatoes blistered and burst properly. Sauce was a bit one-note, and 400g of pasta stretched it too thin.
• Test 3: added lemon zest and juice, basil, chilli and T's mum's kalonji, and dropped the pasta to 350g. This is the version below. Our nephew had seconds, and T scraped the tin with a piece of naan, which is the highest praise our kitchen gives.
• The spaghetti detour: it works, but the sauce slides off and collects at the bottom. Short, ridged shapes like rigatoni or casarecce hold on to the lumps of tomato and feta much better.

We're not putting a score on someone else's recipe, so this verdict is about our version only.

Our baked feta pasta has quietly become a Tuesday regular. It's not the most exciting thing we cook, and it isn't trying to be. It's the dinner for the night when one of us has been on calls till seven and the other has been in court, nobody wants to chop anything, and there's a block of feta in the fridge that was bought for a salad that never happened.

If you want to change it up, Jan can scale it for one or for a crowd, swap the pasta for something gluten-free, or work out what to do if all you've got is a punnet of normal-size tomatoes and half a block of feta. (Halloumi, for the record, is still not the answer.)