Oven-Roasted Tomato Bucatini Recipe

If you're looking for an impressive pasta recipe with just a few ingredients and minimal work required, meet our oven-roasted tomato bucatini. This dish is big on flavor and little on effort — our favorite kind of cooking.

Roasted cherry tomatoes are the star of this dish. When you combine tomatoes with olive oil, herbs, and lots of sliced garlic — and then let them hang out in the oven for a bit — you end up with the most satisfying, savory-sweet-sour flavor bombs, perfect for tossing with pasta. This recipe also features capers, which play off the tanginess of the tomatoes, and basil, which adds herby freshness and color contrast.

This bucatini is easy enough for weeknights and fancy enough for guests. Add a green side salad and garlic bread to complete the meal. Alexandra Shytsman of the plant-based blog The New Baguette walks us through this delicious dish.

To make this recipe, you'll need bucatini, grape or cherry tomatoes, garlic, capers, dried oregano, some chili flakes, extra-virgin olive oil, and fresh basil.

Bucatini (sometimes called perciatelli) is a classic pasta shape. It's a long pasta — like spaghetti — and its defining characteristic is a hole running through the center. Bucatini is particularly popular in Rome and is commonly served "all' Amatriciana," in a traditional sauce made with tomatoes and guanciale. However, this roasted tomato sauce technique will work with any kind of pasta — long or short.

To start this recipe, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, halve the tomatoes and put them in a large roasting pan. Add the olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, oregano, chili flakes, salt, and pepper. Toss everything so the tomatoes are evenly coated, and pop them into the oven for about 40 minutes, tossing them halfway.

If you only have large tomatoes, you can go ahead and use them for this dish. Just be sure to cut them into roughly 1-inch chunks.

This step is a good time to incorporate other flavors, too. For instance, instead of dried oregano, you can add fresh thyme or rosemary, or experiment with other dried herbs, like herbes de Provence.

When the tomatoes are about halfway cooked, bring a large pot of water to a boil for the pasta. Season the boiling water generously with salt; a good rule of thumb is pasta water should be as salty as the ocean. Be sure not to cook the pasta past al dente. Before draining the bucatini, reserve some of the starchy pasta cooking water.

Finally, combine the cooked pasta with the roasted tomatoes, capers, lots of black pepper, and the reserved pasta water. Top the pasta with fresh basil, and prepare your taste buds to be transported!