We tried out this baked feta pasta dish that’s viral on TikTok

In the most current foods pattern on TikTok, home chefs are incorporating a big block of feta cheese to a sheet pan and roasting it in their oven with tomatoes — and at times other veggies — then mixing it all with pasta. The end result is a creamy, cheesy, salty dish that consumers of the app are swooning above.

But the recipe isn’t really specifically new: Finnish food stuff blogger Jenni Häyrinen produced the dish in 2019, contacting it “Uunifetapasta,” the Finnish term for oven-baked feta pasta.

“Quickly just after it was demonstrated in my Instagram stories, I discovered followers’ strong response to it,” Häyrinen, who lives in Helsinki, advised Nowadays Foodstuff in an electronic mail. “I arranged an #uunifetapasta live on my Instagram tales in which I reposted followers’ creations a few times in a row night time and day. Other influencers and newspapers picked it up, and in a couple of weeks all people in Finland was cooking it!”

“The retailers actually ran out of feta cheese listed here,” mentioned Häyrinen, whose unique blog site submit about the dish has over 3 million sights. “#Uunifetapasta was awarded as the phenomenon of the calendar year in 2019 in Finland. I’m not surprised it truly is heading viral elsewhere as well, I know it has the potential to do so.”

To make the dish, start off by adding some olive oil to the bottom of a pan then spot a block of feta in the centre and encompass it with tomatoes.Terri Peters

Now that Häyrinen’s creation is circulating on TikTok, the baked feta pasta dish is looking at yet another spherical of viral acclaim. Following hearing the tale driving the dish’s level of popularity, I decided to try out making Uunifetapasta for my loved ones for meal.

The dish is amazingly easy: Incorporate some olive oil to the base of a pan then location a block of feta in the heart and surround it with tomatoes. Toss in some garlic, pink chilies, salt and pepper and roast the total detail on 400 F for 15 minutes. Subsequent, flip the heat up to 440 F and roast till you get some golden-brown coloring on the cheese and tomatoes.

Häyrinen suggests ending the roasting procedure with a several minutes less than a broiler, creating in her web site article, “This may induce the hearth alarm to go off, mine does that every single time.”

To retain issues as reliable as probable, I roasted my feta and tomatoes until our smoke detector started to protest. Then it was time to blend up the pan and incorporate some cooked pasta.

When the baked feta is eliminated from the oven, it’s time to mix the tomatoes and cheese with each other.Terri Peters

The end result? Heavenly, salty, tacky goodness. I have witnessed TikTokers incorporate more greens to the combine, but certainly, Häyrinen’s version was best in its simplicity.

But what does Häyrinen think of the modifications to her recipe she’s noticed on the application?

This pasta dish was very simple to make and was a substantial hit at my meal table.Terri Peters

“I enjoy looking at diverse variants,” she said. “The whole stage of why I do this is to encourage others to prepare dinner and share strategies.”

Viewing so quite a few various takes on her dish inspired Häyrinen to make a distinctive variation with asparagus, which she suggests was also rather well-known between her Finnish followers.

“The first recipe was developed mainly because I needed a swift and uncomplicated lunch,” Häyrinen shared. “I was having hungry and started out craving some oven baked feta. I made the decision to switch it into a meal, adding tomatoes to generate a sauce and combining it with pasta. It is easy, tremendous scrumptious and it isn’t going to hurt that it really is vegetarian and Instagrammable when the feta arrives out of the oven.”