Meals · Pasta & noodle bakes

Baked feta pasta

Name: Baked feta pasta
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 1 lb grape tomatoes; 1 block feta cheese; 3 tbsp olive oil; 4 cloves garlic, minced; a pinch red pepper flakes; 400 g dry pasta, cooked al dente; a handful fresh basil, torn

The 2021 phenomenon that refused to fade: a block of feta baked in a sea of tomatoes until both collapse into sauce. Five ingredients, one pan, still one of the internet's favourites.

Time: 40 min (5 prep + 35 cook)
Servings: 4
Per serving: 649 kcal
Protein: 25 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1 lb grape tomatoes500 g
1 block feta cheese200 g
3 tbsp olive oil45 g
4 cloves garlic, minced15 g
a pinch red pepper flakes1 g
400 g dry pasta, cooked al dente944 g
a handful fresh basil, torn10 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Toss the tomatoes with most of the oil in a baking dish, set the feta block in the middle, and pour the rest of the oil over it.
Bake at 200°C for 30–35 minutes until the tomatoes have burst and the feta is golden at the edges.
Straight from the oven, add the garlic and pepper flakes and mash everything into a rough sauce — the residual heat cooks the garlic.
Fold in the hot pasta with a splash of its cooking water, and finish with basil.

Why did this recipe go viral and stay?

The recipe went viral because it works: feta is salty enough to season the whole dish and melts into cream without any cream. A splash of starchy pasta water is what turns it from lumps into sauce.

Why this score

easy to overeat

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

15% of kcal

67% water

11 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2595 kcal goes into the pot, 1715 g of ingredients comes out as ~1644 g of food → 158 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 158
Protein: (15%); 6 g
Fat: (33%); 6 g
Carbohydrates: (51%); 20 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 202 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More meals

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.