What’s your favorite dinner from your childhood? My mum has always been a big, from-scratch cook, so my childhood was filled with family-friendly, easy recipes. Roast dinners, casseroles, BBQs, and of course, the staple creamy tuna pasta bake- or tuna mornay if you live in Australia. It’s a total classic made up of simple ingredients and is great when you’ve got a few extra bodies around the dinner table. Throw together a side salad and dinner is done. If you’re lucky, there might be leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch!

a large white ceramic dish of oven baked, creamy tuna pasta bake.

I love a good baked pasta dish, don’t you? Everyone has their take on what makes a great tuna bake. For me, it’s the creamy bechamel sauce combination of cheddar cheese, corn, and tuna. I just LOVE it. For me, this is the perfect Sunday night dinner. I have this rule in our house that all jobs need to be finished by 3 pm on Sunday. After that is my me time. A time for everyone to rest whether that be a long bath or a movie and popcorn and be ready for the new school week. So, Sunday dinners are usually prepped earlier in the day, for a quick finish at dinner time.

What you need to make this creamy tuna pasta bake recipe

Pantry staples All purpose flour, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt flakes, and black pepper
Dairy – butter, full cream milk, vintage cheddar cheese, and Reggiano parmesan cheese.
Canned Tuna in spring water
Sweet corn kernels
Vegetables – Brown onion, garlic, carrot, frozen peas
Bread crumbs. Either homemade (what I use) or store-bought is fine. If you are using storebought, look for panko breadcrumbs. They are lighter and stay crispier than regular breadcrumbs which will give a delicious crunchy texture topping to your cheesy tuna pasta bake.
Pasta. I use I due Pastori Rigatoni pasta for Tuna Mornay. Many people use penne pasta, however, I find that penne is too small for the chunky vegetables and sauce of the Tuna Mornay to get inside the cooked pasta. Whereas rigatoni is that little bit bigger, allowing more mornay sauce to get inside to fully coat the pasta.

The nitty gritty

In a large saucepan add one tablespoon of oil the diced onion and carrots. Sauté on low heat for five minutes. Add the crushed garlic cloves and stir for one minute until fragrant. Transfer to a prep dish and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Cook the pasta to package instructions, drain and set aside.
To make the bechamel sauce (creamy white sauce). In a large saucepan melt the butter on low heat. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir to combine into a paste. Cook, stirring continuously, on low heat for 5 minutes. This is needed to cook out the flour.
Add 1 cup of milk continually stirring to allow the milk to incorporate into the flour mixture (or roux). At this stage, change from using your wooden spoon to stir to a whisk. It will make it much easier to get a smooth, creamy sauce. Gradually add the remaining milk a little at a time, stirring continuously until the mixture resembles a thick, creamy sauce. A bechamel sauce can take a lot of liquid, so don’t be afraid if it looks really runny. Cooking the sauce will cause the sauce will thicken. If it thickens too much, just add more liquid.
Strain the tuna keeping the liquid. Using the tuna liquid continue to cook the sauce adding in the same way as the milk. The sauce should coat the back of a spoon but not be too thick. It will continue cooking/thickening while in the oven, so I like to start with a thin sauce.
Strain the corn kernels, keeping 2 tbsp of the liquid for the mornay sauce.
Add the cheese and stir through to let it melt in.
Add the onion garlic and carrot mixture as well as the drained tuna, frozen peas, corn, reserved corn juice and cooked drained pasta. Stir and combine thoroughly. Transfer the mixture to a large oven-proof baking dish.
For the topping in a small bowl combine breadcrumbs and remaining parmesan and grated cheddar cheese. Give a quick mix to combine.
Top the pasta mixture with the topping crumb and bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

Cook’s notes

Always cook the pasta until it’s al-dente. Usually, this is a couple of minutes less than packet instructions. The pasta will continue cooking once it’s added to the sauce, so al-dente pasta ensures the pasta is not overcooked and mushy!

Want to add different veggies? Go for it! The secret to a good creamy tuna mornay pasta bake is to use whatever vegetables you have in the fridge. In the past, I’ve used green beans, and broccoli florets, and I’m not opposed to the odd handful of English spinach!

Make your own breadcrumbs with yesterday’s bread.

Just pop some torn-up bread into a food processor with a multipurpose blade and pulse until the bread becomes breadcrumbs. You can also do this in a blender.

Equipment you’ll need for this classic tuna bake recipe.

A large pot of water to cook the rigatoni pasta, as well as a large saucepan or stovetop casserole dish. You will also need a cook’s knife, a chopping board, a whisk, and a wooden spoon. I primarily cook in cast iron cookware, so for this recipe, the bechamel sauce was made in a 26cm Le Creuset French oven. If like me, you cook in cast iron, you can also bake the tuna casserole in the same dish. Instead, I transferred the cheese sauce to an ovenproof dish before baking it in the oven.

How do I store any leftovers?

If you baked this tuna mornay recipe in an oven-proof, ceramic dish, you could leave the leftovers in it, then just cover it with either plastic wrap or a silicon lid. Alternatively, you can also transfer the leftovers to an airtight container. Always be sure to leave any leftovers to cool completely before transferring them into the fridge.

Here are a few more comfort food classics for you…

Do you have a favourite comfort food dish? Let me know in the comments