Frittata with Pasta – The Pasttata!
A lot of people like to make quiches or frittatas with potato, but I am here to tell you a frittata with pasta is the best brunch dish there is! Often times when you use potato, it sucks the moisture out of the frittata, but with pasta, it adds the needed starch level without drying everything out! After you have the pasta and egg, the sky is the limit for what you can put into these Frittatas with Pasta! I make mine with sausage, bacon, onion, cheese, and parsley cause that is my favorite breakfast combo.
Inspiration for the Frittata with Pasta
I was never the biggest fan of quiches or frittatas growing up. They weren’t exactly bad, but I would much rather an omelet or just scrambled eggs any day of the week. To me, it is easier and tastier and so why bother with the extra effort a quiche requires?
Similarly, my grandmother used to make a baked egg and pasta dish she called “pastair” or “pastere” – pronounced pa-stare, or past – air. I am not sure what the correct spelling is for this, or if it even exists outside of my extended family. While my family was obsessed with it, I never really liked it all that much. It was basically baked egg and pasta cooled down and cut into squares. I would hold it in my hand like a brownie and snack on it as a kid with my sister.
There is also a traditional version of this called Frittata di Pasta originating in Naples, Italy. I wanted to do a more American version with lots of cheese and meaty goodness.
The frittata with pasta, is sort of a combo of these things, but it totally changed my mind about their goodness. Borrowing components from pastair, frittata, and quiche, this ‘pasttata’ was fantastic, simple, and fun to make!
Now let’s make the Frittata with Pasta!
I have changed my recipe for this over the years a bit to really perfect it. I used to cook the meat, then mix everything in a bowl, and then add it back to the same pan and put it into the oven.
Now the way I do it is start with the meat and onions in the pan. A good stainless steel frying pan is important to the recipe.
Cook this down a bit and keep breaking it up and scraping the bottom of the pan so nothing gets stuck.
Now that everything is broken up and cooked, spoon out some of the rendered fat. We want that flavor and fat to coat the pan, but we don’t need ALL of it. After that, turn up the heat to high.
The egg mixture
Pictured below is eggs, cheese, parsley, and milk. Whisk it up good!
Get the pan nice and hot, then add the cooked pasta. My pasta is usually day old and lightly tossed in olive oil. I make extra when I am making pasta so that I can have some for a frittata with pasta the next day!
After the pasta, add the egg mixture and shake it around a bit to get everything mixed together. Then pop this into the oven to finish cooking.
Flipping it out of the pan
Use a small spatula and run it around the edges to make sure everything is loose. If you have a nice flexible one, you can really go all around and under to make sure you can flip this thing out cleanly.
You don’t NEED to flip it out of the pan, you could always cut and serve it right from the pan, but I like the drama.
Cut and Serve
Grab a sharp knife and a pie server and cut the frittata with pasta into slices. Then serve it up! The pasta on the edges gets nice and crispy and acts like a crust for the creamy meaty insides.
A fantastic addition to any brunch table! Perfect for the morning after a party or when you have overnight guests during the holidays.
Twists and shortcuts for the frittata with pasta
My favorite thing to do when I am changing this up is use a different kind of pasta! The spaghetti is great, but it’s also fun with linguine, ziti, elbows, or whatever your favorite pasta is!
This is also a great dish to make vegetarian. I like to add some hearty veggies if I am making this vegetarian though, like squash, artichoke hearts, or mushrooms,
Here are some ingredients that I think would be great combos in the frittata with pasta.
- artichoke and spinach
- ham and kale
- peppers, onions, and bacon
- sausage and diced tomato
- chicken sausage and broccoli rabe
- prosciutto and asparagus
- potato and rosemary
If you want to make this a little easier, you could also just mix all the ingredients in a baking dish and and bake it like a quiche. Keep in mind though, everything should be cooked before adding it in, you don’t really want to use raw veggies or they won’t cook enough, and might add too much water to the egg mixture.
Frittata with Pasta – The Pasttata
Equipment
Ingredients
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup shredded cheese I used a mix of cheddar and jack
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 1/4 cup milk
- salt, pepper, paprika, chili flake to taste
- 3 slices bacon chopped into strips
- 1/3 pound breakfast sausage
- 1/2 small onion
- 1/3 pound pasta cooked to package instructions
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350.
- Whisk together the eggs, cheese, parsley, and milk. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper, but not too much cause the bacon and sausage are already pretty salty.
- Preheat a 9 inch stainless steel frying pan over medium high heat. Add a splash of olive oil to coat the pan. Add in the bacon, sausage, and onion and stir to combine. Cook about 6 -8 minutes, stirring often, until browned and cooked though.
- If there is a ton of excess fat, use a spoon to remove a little. You want a good amount of fat coating the meat and bottom of the pan, but with this much bacon and sausage it can be a lot.
- Stir the pasta into the meat in the pan. Use tongs and stir to combine. Turn heat to high.
- Pour the egg mixture into the pan and gently move everything around a bit with your tongs to incorporate the eggs into the pasta and all throughout the meat.
- Transfer the pan to the oven and cook about 20 minutes until cooked through. You can use a knife to test if the center is done.
- Allow to sit for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.
WHAT!??! you didnt like PASTAIR!!?!!??! all those years it was all a lie???
paula dean has a recipe for quiche where you back hash browns to make a crust and then fill it…i bet that would be better than a normal quiche.
This looks like lovin’ right there. Pure lovin’.
This looks so incredibly delicious. Makes me want to invite some people for brunch just so I can make it! 🙂
The way you wrote the names on the seasonings made me smile. Especially when they were all mushed together in the paste. Looks yum 🙂
what is the best way to reheat this? I’d like to make it for a get together this weekend. Or am I better off assembling at home and cooking at the party?
thanks~
hmmmmmm… I took it to work and just microwaved it and it tasted great, but that would be unacceptable for a party situation in my opinion. I think I would make it right before the party, make sure it came off the pan clean (didnt stick), then take it to the party (in that same pan)warm and throw it in the oven there for 10 minutes. I’m not 100% sure about this, but that is my first thought. I don’t think you have the fear of drying out or becoming rubbery because of the pasta and cheese in it. let me know if this works for you or what you try! also the thing is still tasty lukewarm…
I think this is going to be my Boxing Day present to myself.
How is this under “cheap”? The cheese alone would break the bank. Plus fresh herbs.
Welcome to my site “poor college student”. my reasoning behind calling this cheap, is that it was made with mostly leftovers. instead of buying sausage, I used leftover beef and herbs. you could make it without the herbs, or with store bought sausage, or no sausage at all and it would still be delicious. as for the cheeses, I had all these in my fridge already and only used a little of each. you could just use cheddar if you wanted, or any cheese you had around. The point really is that it is just a method and good with any leftovers. I do admit though that if you followed this recipe exactly, and bought everything I outlined specifically just to make this, it wouldn’t be cheap.
That looks like it would be great with some spinach! My mother makes a spinach quiche with spinach, egg, swiss, and bacon, so this reminds me a bit of that.
so original!! looks yummy. thanks!
Oh wow, that looks delicious! I’ll have to give that a try sometime soon.
Dan –
I made this for a holiday party yesterday. I used jimmy dean regular sausage in lieu of making my own, but I did add fresh parsley and sage to the mix before cooking it in the oven. I added the garlic near the end of cooking the sausage and onion. I used a whole pound of pasta so added 2 more eggs.
Anyways, it was a big hit and everyone wanted to know what it was. “pasttata”, of course.
I did give you the cred, but your dish won the award for most talked about.
Oh and I ended up cooking it for 20 mins, drove it over to the party (1/2 hour drive) then cooked it at 400 for 10 minutes and broiled it for 4-5. It stuck the bottom of the pan, but it could have just been the pan; it’s not a super nice thick pan like yours.
This looks great, but… Am I missing something on the page? Like how much cheese? An actual recipe would be a super addition to the otherwise great presentation of this unique dish.
fresh in from the stumble button! great site!
i was curious if you had some more exact measurements for the ingredients, maybe in the form of a recipe. I’d love to try this, but since i have a fiancé, her uncle, myself and a child at home, there are rarely leftovers in our fridge. i will have to use fresh stuff. this sounds so much better than a plain ol’ eggy quiche.
Cheers!
Hi there, I just wanted to let you know that I tried out this recipe and it was freakin AMAZING! I made it for my family on Christmas for breakfast and they loved it. I used different cheeses (five-year white cheddar, humboldt fog, gruyere, provolone, parmesan, and garlic jack) but it looked reasonably the same and tasted fantastic. I just wanted to let you know that you helped me make a meal that my entire family liked.
A side note, putting a cheese crust on this makes it even more amazing. I just shredded up gruyere and parmesan on top before I tossed it in the oven. Also, you can totally substitute the pasta for spinach, it actually makes it more flavorful because the pasta kind of saps the flavors. I just put the spinach in the pan and then poured the egg-meat-cheese mix over it with some olive oil at the bottom of the pan. Anyway, yes, thank you for the fantastic food. Well done!
I make something very similar! Although, not with the sausage – this is absolutely delicious. I thought I was full from dinner when I started reading this..and now…hungry for this!
I made a pasttata today for my wife’s birthday breakfast. It was a really big hit! I admit, I didn’t make it with leftovers, but bought fresh ingredients for most everything. It was very cool to make my own sausage. I had never done that before, and it turned out great! One of the comments was to spread grated Parmesan cheese on the top before baking, and I did that too. So, the dish was a hit and the reheated leftovers will be enjoyed as a quick breakfast before work. Serendipity, I say, and thanks for the great recipe!
You should write a book!
::wipes drool off chin::
You, sir, are a god.
this does look good, and i don’t usually like “a bunch of stuff mixed up and baked together with cheese and pasta” dishes. but i want to eat this one. my mom loves that kind of stuff, and i am sure she will love this.
This looks delicious! I’m impressed with the making of your own sausage. It all sounds so good.
While this does look quite nice, what you’ve just made is a frittata, plain and simple.
It’s not a twist on a frittata, or a frittata/quiche hybrid, or anything else…
It is a frittata.
FWIW.