Ham Tetrazzini Recipe (Oven-Baked)

Ham tetrazzini is the dish that finally justifies buying a bone-in ham you have no realistic hope of finishing. Twelve ounces of spaghetti, a cheddar cream sauce built in the same pan the mushrooms cooked in, and two cups of diced leftovers turn into a casserole that nobody at the table reads as leftovers. Ham tetrazzini is the rare recycling job that tastes deliberate.

The original tetrazzini was chicken or turkey in a sherry cream sauce, named for an opera singer and served in San Francisco hotels. This ham tetrazzini keeps the shape of that idea, swaps in cured pork and sharp cheddar, and gets from cold pan to the table in about forty-five minutes. It is a weeknight casserole with a very good origin story.

What Is Ham Tetrazzini?

Ham tetrazzini belongs to a category rather than being a single fixed recipe. Tetrazzini means pasta bound in a cream sauce with mushrooms and a protein, topped with cheese and browned. Chicken and turkey are the classic fillings, and both are usually finished with sherry and Parmesan.

Ham tetrazzini takes the same construction somewhere saltier and more assertive. Cured ham brings its own smoke and seasoning, so the sauce needs less help, and the sweetness of the meat wants a cheese with some bite behind it. That is the whole argument for cheddar over Parmesan in ham tetrazzini.

The other thing worth knowing is that ham tetrazzini is a skillet dish that becomes a casserole only if you want it to. Everything happens in one pan. Transferring it to a baking dish and running it under the broiler for a couple of minutes is optional, and it is what earns the crisp golden edges people expect from a bake.

Save this recipe

Enter your email and I’ll send this recipe straight to your inbox.

Email address

Email me this recipe

Website

Ingredient Notes

• Spaghetti. Twelve ounces, cooked to just al dente and no further. It keeps cooking in the hot sauce, and a minute of overcooking at the boil becomes three minutes of mush in the dish.
• Cooked ham. Two cups, diced into half-inch cubes. This is the ingredient that makes it ham tetrazzini rather than the chicken original. Leftover roast ham is ideal because the cubes stay juicy; deli ham works but tends to go dry and papery in a hot sauce.
• Cremini mushrooms. Eight ounces, sliced. Creminis are firmer and deeper in flavor than white buttons, which matters in a sauce this rich. Cook them until they squeak and give up their water.
• Butter and all-purpose flour. Three tablespoons of butter split between the vegetables and the roux, plus three tablespoons of flour. That ratio thickens two cups of milk and a cup of broth to a sauce that still pours.
• Whole milk and chicken broth. Two cups and one cup. The broth keeps it from tasting like a bechamel, and low-sodium broth is the right choice given how much salt the ham carries.
• Sharp cheddar. Two cups, grated from a block. Bagged shreds are dusted with starch to keep them separate, and that starch is exactly what turns a smooth sauce grainy.
• Frozen peas. One cup, thawed. Thawing first matters more than it sounds, because a cup of frozen peas drops the sauce temperature enough to stall the melt.
• Dried thyme. One teaspoon. It is the quiet ingredient that keeps a cheddar sauce from tasting flat, and it stands up to baking in a way that fresh herbs do not.
• Parmesan for the top. A third of a cup, optional but worth it. Under a broiler it browns faster and more evenly than cheddar does.

Cheddar or Parmesan?

Most tetrazzini recipes reach for Parmesan, and with chicken that is the right instinct. Chicken is mild, the sauce needs savory depth, and Parmesan supplies it without adding much fat.

Ham tetrazzini changes the math. Cured pork is already salty and already savory, so Parmesan piles more of the same flavor onto a dish that has plenty. Sharp cheddar pushes in a different direction: acidic, tangy, a little sweet, and it melts into a properly creamy sauce rather than staying grainy the way hard aged cheeses can.

Ham is also a genuinely lean cut once you look past its reputation, and the National Pork Board publishes the nutrition figures for common pork cuts if you want to see how it compares.

Use both if you like. Cheddar in the sauce, Parmesan on top for browning, is the arrangement this ham tetrazzini settles on, and it gives you creaminess underneath and a browned crust above.

How To Make Ham Tetrazzini

Ham tetrazzini comes together in five moves. First, boil the spaghetti. Salt the water properly and cook the pasta to just under al dente. Reserve half a cup of the cooking water before you drain it, because that starchy liquid is the easiest fix for a sauce that tightens up later.

Next, cook the mushrooms and onion. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat, add the onion and mushrooms, and give them five to six minutes until softened and browning at the edges. Stir in the garlic for one minute more.

Then build the sauce. Add the last tablespoon of butter, sprinkle in the flour and stir constantly for a minute or two until it forms a golden paste. Whisk in the milk gradually, then the broth, add the thyme and simmer for three to four minutes until it thickens but still pours.

After that, add the cheese and the filling. Turn the heat to low, stir in the cheddar until it melts, then fold through the diced ham and thawed peas. Season with salt and black pepper, tasting as you go, and remember the ham is already salted.

Finally, toss and brown. Add the drained spaghetti and turn it gently until every strand is coated, loosening with pasta water if needed. Transfer to a greased nine-by-thirteen dish, scatter the Parmesan over the top and broil for two to three minutes until bubbling and golden.

How To Tell When It Is Ready

Finished ham tetrazzini should be coated rather than swimming. The sauce should cling to the pasta rather than pool underneath it. Tilt the pan before it goes into the dish: if liquid runs to one side, simmer for another minute or two, because it will not thicken meaningfully in the oven.

Under the broiler you are looking for two things, an evenly golden surface and visible bubbling at the edges. Neither takes long, so judge by sight rather than by the clock. Then let it rest five minutes before serving. Cut into it straight away and the sauce runs; give it those five minutes and a square holds its shape on the plate.

Temperature is the other tell. Pulled from the broiler the center should read about 165 degrees, which is where the sauce is hot the whole way through without having tightened around the pasta. An instant-read thermometer pushed into the middle of the dish settles the question in three seconds.

Make It Ahead

Ham tetrazzini is a genuinely good make-ahead casserole, which is not true of every pasta bake. Assemble it completely, stop before the broiler, cool it, cover it tightly and refrigerate for up to a day.

Take the dish out of the fridge fifteen minutes before it goes into the oven so it is not fridge-cold in the center. Bake it covered at 350 degrees for about twenty-five minutes, then uncover, add the Parmesan and broil as usual. Cold pasta bakes need that gentle reheat before the fast browning step.

You can also split the work: cook the pasta and dice the ham the day before, refrigerate them separately, then make the sauce fresh and assemble the ham tetrazzini in one go. That takes the active time down to about twenty minutes on the night itself.

Storing Ham Tetrazzini

Covered in the fridge, ham tetrazzini keeps three to four days. It firms up considerably as it chills, so reheat individual portions with a tablespoon of milk stirred through, either in a covered dish at 325 degrees or in the microwave in short bursts.

Freezing works if you plan for it. Assemble the dish, skip the broiler and freeze it unbaked, double wrapped, for up to two months. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then bake covered for forty minutes and finish under the broiler. Freezing it already baked is possible but the pasta comes back noticeably softer.

Reheated ham tetrazzini is better out of an oven than a microwave, mostly because a microwave heats the sauce faster than the pasta and the two separate. If the microwave is what you have, cover the plate and use half power.

Variations and Substitutions

Turkey or chicken. Swap the ham cup for cup and you are back at the original tetrazzini. Both are milder, so add a teaspoon of Dijon or a splash of dry sherry to make up the lost savor.

Broccoli instead of peas. Two cups of small florets, steamed until just tender, fold in the same way and make the dish feel less rich.

A different pasta. Fettuccine, linguine or penne all work. Short shapes hold more sauce per bite; long strands are more traditional.

Sherry. A quarter cup of dry sherry added to the pan after the mushrooms, cooked down for a minute, is how the original was built. It is optional here and it is very good.

A crunchy top. Half a cup of panko tossed with a tablespoon of melted butter, scattered over before broiling, gives the crisp finish that crushed crackers used to provide.

Lighter. Two percent milk in place of whole, and half the cheddar, still works. The sauce is thinner, so hold back a little of the pasta water rather than adding it.

What to Serve with Ham Tetrazzini

Something green and sharp. A salad with a mustardy vinaigrette does more for a plate of ham tetrazzini than any other side, because the casserole is rich, salty and soft, and it wants acid and crunch beside it.

Garlic bread is the crowd-pleasing answer, and warm ham and cheese crescent rolls lean into the same flavors if you are feeding people who came specifically to eat. Roasted asparagus or green beans with lemon do the job better if you want balance, and either one takes ten minutes in the same oven.

Ham tetrazzini is a hard match for red wine. An off-dry Riesling handles the salt better than anything red does, and a crisp lager works just as well without any thinking.

Portioning is worth a thought too. A nine-by-thirteen dish cuts cleanly into six generous squares or eight modest ones, and the squares hold together far better than spooned servings do. Cut it with a thin knife, lift with a wide spatula, and the pasta stays where you put it.

Ham Tetrazzini FAQ

More Questions About Leftover Ham

If a dish like this ham tetrazzini is the shape of your week, a chicken tetrazzini casserole is the version to make when there is no ham in the fridge, and Johnny Marzetti takes the same one-pan pasta logic in a tomato direction.