Baked Cream Cheese Spaghetti Casserole – everyone goes crazy over this dish – they always ask for the recipe! Make ahead of time and refrigerate until ready to bake. Great for a crowd. The BEST pasta I have ever had. Seriously better than you’ll find in any restaurant.
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Pin This RecipeThis was the best thing we ate last week. It was quick and delicious!! I saw a version of this on Pinterest. It looked so good that I had to add it to the menu ASAP!
You probably have everything you need to make this pasta dish in your pantry right now. This can be made ahead of time and baked when you are ready. I love these kinds of dishes. The pasta was really creamy and wonderful! We both absolutely loved it. It was even better the next day at lunch. This will be going into our usual dinner rotation!
Baked Cream Cheese Spaghetti Casserole
Ingredients:
- 12- oz spaghetti
- 1 (26-oz) jar prepared spaghetti sauce
- 1- lb lean ground beef
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 clove garlic minced
- 1 (8-oz) package cream cheese, room temperature
- ½ cup parmesan cheese grated
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350ºF degrees.
- In a skillet, brown the ground beef until cooked through; drain fat and stir in spaghetti sauce. Set aside.
- Cook spaghetti according to directions on packet. Drain and place cooked spaghetti in bowl. Add cream cheese, Italian Seasoning and minced garlic. Stir until cream cheese is melted and the spaghetti is thoroughly coated.
- Lightly grease a 9×13″ pan. Spread a small amount of meat sauce in the bottom of the dish. Put spaghetti on top of sauce and top with remaining meat sauce. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.
- Bake for 30 minutes, until bubbly.
Video:
Notes:
Steph
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I have fixed this twice. It has great flavor, but it turns pink, when the sauce hits the cream cheese! Any ideas?
No one suggests any pepers or onions?
I think peppers & onions would be delicious. I would saute them with the ground beef.
I use peppers and onions and also put yellow squash and zucchini in my sauce and besides the cream cheese I use cheddar and mixed park in with the spaghetti,love this recipe
Sounds delicious!
It was delicious we will be making again Thanks for the recipe
Love this
I’ve got my sauce in my pot added onion, bell peppers, mushrooms zucchini, squash that I grilled last night. Can’t wait to enjoy one of my family’s favorite
Now this looks delicious! I've already made to other recipes with success so I bookmarked this one to make soon. Thank you Steph!
I agree, while very good, I was wishing for more moisture. Next time, I think I will try some diced tomatoes in addition to the spaghetti sauce.
I had leftover spaghetti so I added the cream cheese, garlic and Italian seasoning to the meat and sauce. Then I added the spaghetti and tossed it all together to get the spaghetti warm. I topped it with mozzarella. I also used Italian sausage instead of ground beef. Turned out really well and was very delicious! Thanks for sharing the recipe!
Well this was quite yummy! Loving that the each time I make this, I am able to try a different protein too. This time I had pepperoni on hand that needed to be used and oh boy was that tasty!
Thank you for sharing
I made this last night for dinner in a gluten free version and it was awesome! Perfect combo of spaghetti and lasagna. Hubby and two teenage boys really liked it. We will definitely be making this again!
This may be a silly question, but what did you season your ground beef/turkey in? Just regular salt and pepper?
I did not season the meat, but you can certainly add seasonings to your liking. enjoy!
I made this tonight, and so far, it's been a hit. And really easy to make. We're a family of seven so I used a 17.5oz package of spaghetti I had, 10oz light cream cheese, and a 64oz jar of sauce. I didn't have any hamburger on hand, so ours was vegetarian. I did add a bunch of spinach that needed to be used up before it went bad–excellent addition. Also mixed some Parmesan in with the noodles. I'm not much of a red sauce person, but it's excellent. I think next time, I'll get some Italian sausage to go in it.
Found this recipe on Pinterest. After reading the reviews I made the following changes and it turned out awesome! I added a 16 oz can of Fire Roasted Tomatoes to the empty Spaghetti Sauce jar to make sure I got out all the flavor. I also used one pound of Italian Sausage too the Ground Beef. Mixed the sauce and tomatoes together in the skillet and added 2 generous teaspoons of Italian Seasoning and 2 teaspoons of garlic to the sauce. Put half of the sauce in the bottom of my pan and covered that with 2 cups of Italian Cheese Blend. Since others had commented on how difficult it was to mix the spaghetti and cream cheese, I cubed my softened cream cheese into a large bowl and popped it in the microwave to soften further. Dumped the hot spaghetti into the bowl over the cream cheese and mixed. It was a little difficult to mix even with the softened cream cheese but doable. Put the spaghetti over the meat layer and continued with the rest of the recipe. The end result was wonderful. Not dry as others had experienced. Hubby loved it. Another winner from Plain Chicken.
Delicious! Didn't want to mess with trying to get 28 oz. of sauce from my 24 oz. jars…plus I'm feeding a family of five and am fine with leftovers…so I used one-and-a-half of the 24 oz. jars of spaghetti sauce (what most of the brands seem to be sold in these days) for a total of 36 oz. of sauce, then one full 16 oz. box of spaghetti noodles. I kept everything else the same (didn't want to mess with adding an extra 1/4 a block of cream cheese), so it had a little less cream cheese and ground beef proportionately for the amount of noodles and sauce I ended up using, but it still tasted very rich and cheesy! It still fit in my 9×13 baking dish, and the leftovers we had warmed up very nicely in the microwave. It's now in our regular rotation!
Making this tonight for dinner,made mine with shredded chicken and added mozzarella cheese on top of 1st layer of sauce and top of the top 🙂 It smelled and looked delish def made enough for my family,ill update and say how good it was 🙂
I had to use an 8 by 8 bc my 9 by 13 was too rusted and I had to throw it away. So hopefully it still comes out right. Bc it overflowed in the 8 by 8 oan.
this was a great and easy dish to make. The only thing I would change just because of personal preference is the 8oz of cream cheese to 4oz of cream cheese.
I've got this in the oven right now and it if it smells 1/10th as good it tastes, we are in for a great dinner. The changes I made: I tossed the garlic into the beef as it finished up (only because I had frozen garlic cubes on hand and needed extra heat), and I added extra cheese(s). I added a little parmesan into the pasta sauce, and then topped it with parmesan, provolone, and mozzarella. It was quick, easy, and I did have everything in the pantry on-hand! Thanks. 🙂
I’ve made this dish many times, and we love it! I do add extra sauce, but that’s just my preference.
I remember having the best spaghetti in High school nun years ago, and this is the closest recipe that tastes like I remember it.
So yummy 😋 Thank you!