
Pasta with juicy cherry tomatoes is such a simple dish and makes a really speedy and satisfying weeknight supper.
We love a pasta dish that is ready in the amount of time it takes to boil the pasta, and this is a really great one. All you need is a kilo of cherry tomatoes and some fresh basil - all the other ingredients are things are store cupboard staples. With only seven ingredients in total, this is one of our best cheap family meals. And it's ready to eat in just twenty minutes. This recipe serves four - however you can make it go a little further by simply adding another 75g pasta before you stir the sauce through. Top with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese as well if you like.
Ingredients
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- ½ tsp caster sugar
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- 1kg cherry tomatoes, halved
- 300g short pasta shapes
- 8-9 fresh basil leaves, torn
WEIGHT CONVERTER
Method
- Preheat the grill. Combine the garlic sugar and oregano with the olive oil. Place the cherry tomatoes in a shallow roasting tin and drizzle with the oil mixture. Season with plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper and grill while the pasta cooks.
- Cook pasta in plenty of slated boiling water, until 'al dente'. Drain and return to the pan, off the heat. Stir basil and tomatoes into the pasta. Serve immediately.
Top tip for making pasta with juicy cherry tomatoes
Grilling the cherry tomatoes with sugar really concentrates their flavour. If tomatoes break up when grilled, just pour all juices into pasta to add flavour.

Octavia Lillywhite is an award-winning food and lifestyle journalist with over 15 years of experience. With a passion for creating beautiful, tasty family meals that don’t use hundreds of ingredients or anything you have to source from obscure websites, she’s a champion of local and seasonal foods, using up leftovers and composting, which, she maintains, is probably the most important thing we all can do to protect the environment.