The Best Baked Ziti - Food Wishes

Hi, I'm Chef John from

food

wishes

.com, with the

best

baked

ziti

. That's right, I'm half Italian and grew up eating the

best

Italian-American cuisine and filmed almost 2000 recipe videos, so when you consider all that data, it seems incredible that I've never posted a large

ziti

recipe, but hey, better late than never and I hope to make up for that long wait by posting what I think is the best version out there, so with that let's go ahead and start with a pound and a half of Italian sausage and for this you can use the spicy one or the mild one or like I'm about to To use, use half of each one and before browning this we are going to have to remove the gut, which is done very simply by making a cut. along, at which point we'll go ahead and just peel it, so I went ahead and did that with the other three and then I headed over to the stove where I have a saucepan set over high heat with a little bit of olive oil. into it and we'll transfer our sausage along with a large diced yellow onion and what we'll do here is cook stirring, crumbling and breaking up that meat as we do it until our onions soften and turn translucent and our meat pieces start. to get it to brown nicely, which will take a few minutes, so don't be in a rush and what we're going to do when we think we're about to skip that long enough is we're going to go ahead and add some dried herbs. specifically a little dried oregano, a little dried thyme and a little dried rosemary and we'll stir it in and cook it for a minute or so, at which point we'll add not one but two full jars of marinara sauce, which is about six . cups total, but wait, there's more, once we throw them in, we're going to rinse each of those jars with about a cup of water and we're going to add that in as well and we're going to stir everything up and then while it's still on high heat, we're going to wait for this. so it comes to a simmer and when it does and it looks a little like this, we're going to go ahead and stir it and then we're going to turn the heat back down to medium low and then we're going to let this simmer for about an hour stirring constantly. from time to time, at which point, assuming we are happy with its flavor, it will be ready to use and, by the way, once it is simmered or during the simmering process, if you want to remove some of That fat on top, not bad. idea and normally I do and I probably should have done it here but for some reason this time it didn't seem like there was much so I went ahead and stirred it and that's it, once our sauce is ready we'll just set it aside . and let's move on to cooking our ziti, which as usual we will do in very, very well salted water.

The water should literally taste like the ocean and if you've never been to the ocean, trust me, the water is pretty salty so what. What we will do is stir it well and then cook it, but for a couple of minutes according to the instructions on the package. Okay, we want this to be a little rare since it will continue to cook once it's in the oven with the sauce, so if the package says 10 minutes. I would do it for eight or whatever you think it's going to take so it's a little bit undercooked and then what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and drain it really well and then we're going to transfer it to a big bowl and then we're going to carefully add our sauce, which I didn't do. , I just went ahead and poured it in and it basically splashed all over except by some miracle, not the lens and then what we want to do is take a big spoon or a spatula and stir this very thoroughly and that's because it's a proven scientific fact. tubes like nothing more than to be full of stuff, so as we stir this, all that incredibly tasty sauce will be incorporated into the pasta, which by the way is why I used about 50 more sauces than I thought.

Most recipes call for it, the only thing worse than not baking the CD is a big, dry ziti, but anyway we're going to go ahead and give it a good stir and then I like to let it sit for about five. minutes or so and while that's getting good, we can go ahead and generously pour olive oil into a large saucepan, at which point it's time to move on to the final assembly and what we'll do first is go ahead and transfer exactly half of our pasta sauce mixture and for that I'm going to use one of these round wire strainers and I guess we could go ahead and pour half of it and spread it out, but my theory is that by using this, some of that sauce will drip out. which means my top layer of pasta is going to be a little spicier than the bottom layer, which because of a little thing called gravity I think works better and keeps the top from getting too dry, but it doesn't matter what you use once it is half cooked. transferred, it's time to add a layer of cheese and we're going to use three of them, starting with a nice basket of ricotta and we're going to go ahead and put exactly half of that on top and then we're going to give that to you. just a little bit to spread, okay, not too much, but a little bit, and then we'll spread exactly half of our mozzarella on top and as you can probably see, I cut it into small cubes instead of grating it, which I think has texture . works much better not to mention that depending on the moisture content the mozzarella can be a little difficult to grate and then once half of our mozzarella has been spread we will finish this layer with a very generous gradient of parmesan cheese or if you want, pecorino. which is what I'm using today and that's it, layer one is done and we can move on to our second and final layer and the second verse is the same as the first, we'll go ahead and transfer the rest of our pasta and sauce. and again, you could probably gently tip it over and spread it out, but I like to be a little careful because I don't want to mess up that beautiful layer of cheese that we just created and because of the tool that I was using, this layer definitely came out a little bit spicier and yeah , I might be overthinking that step, but since this turns out so surprisingly well, maybe not, but I ended up giving it the old whisk anyway, at which point we can go ahead and put in the rest of our cheese just this time because it's the top layer, we're not going to spread our ricotta, we're going to leave it in nice portions like this and then just like the first layer, we're going to finish with our mozzarella and pecorino or parmesan like I said both will work, so it's up to you, I mean, after Of all things, you're your big zd's iced tea, but no matter what you use, just make sure you don't use those things that are already rated on the package and that you rated yourself, otherwise you'll just play. yourself and that's it, once the rest of our cheese has been applied over the top, we're going to go ahead and clean up those edges a little bit before transferring it to the center of a 375 degree oven for about 30 to 35 minutes or until our casserole is piping hot and the cheese is wonderfully melted and just starting to brown okay so it looks almost perfect and we really don't want to go any longer since everything here is cooked and really everything we're doing.

It's heating everything up and yes, if you need to, you can serve this immediately, but I think it will be much better if you let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes and while we wait we can go ahead and decorate with the obligatory. chopped Italian parsley, which of course is a mandatory requirement for any and all Italian-American casserole dishes and that's it, once our

baked

ziti has rested and been parsleyed, we can go ahead and serve it, which I'll make cutting a nice big portion with this spoon, okay, this pan should easily serve eight, although I think I only took about a sixth of it and it looked and smelled good, so I quickly added another pinch of parsley, then grabbed a fork and dug in and As I mentioned before, one of my main complaints with many Big Z recipes is that they are too dry, which is not at all the case with this version.

Well, our strategy of using extra sauce without mentioning extra sausage and cheese really worked. well, and I couldn't have been happier with the result, except possibly for one thing, as I mentioned, I probably should have skimmed some of that fat off the top of the sauce, since with all that meat and cheese involved we have a lot of fat. for everyone, but this is how I like to make baked ziti anyway. Well, I'm not saying we should stop making lasagna, but when it comes to pasta-based casseroles with meat, cheese and sauce, baked ziti, especially this version is very, very hard to beat, speaking of which.

In the Italian-American community, this is a very popular potluck dish and if you go to one of those, there's a 100 chance that someone will bring a pan of this and probably a 90 chance that more than one person will bring it and if you bring this and they basically bring any other version you will win, buy a lot and if you're thinking it's not a competition why can't we just enjoy both? Well, it is and we can't, but if you're going to make this to crush the competition at a potluck dinner or you're just looking for something delicious to make and eat during the Sopranos marathon, either way, I really hope you try this soon, so follow the links below for ingredient quantities, a printable written recipe and much more information as always and as always you enjoy.