Recipe: Perfect Baked Ziti

Baked Ziti. Try RICOTTA CHEESE instead of sour cream and skip the provolone for a real Italian version of Baked Ziti. Mix an egg into a pound of ricotta to make it nice and creamy, and toss with the ziti. Layer sauce first (so you don't need to butter the pan), then ziti/cheese, mozzarella, sprinkle with parm and a little dried oregano or basil, then.

Add the pasta and cook at a rolling boil, uncovered, until the pasta is al dente—edible but still a little firm to the bite. The cheesy, comforting recipe got its name from Brenda's son, who often requests his great grandma's baked ziti for special meals. But in Great Grandma's day, the ziti served a different purpose. You can cook Baked Ziti using 11 ingredients and 5 steps. Here is how you cook that.

Ingredients of Baked Ziti

1. Prepare 1 lb of dry ziti pasta.
2. Prepare 1 of onion, chopped.
3. You need 1 lb of italian sausage (or ground beef...I like ground sausage better).
4. Prepare 2 tsp of minced garlic.
5. You need 2 tsp of italian seasoning.
6. It's 2 of jars of spaghetti sauce (26 oz each).
7. Prepare 6 oz of provolone cheese (9-12 round slices).
8. It's 1 1/2 cup of sour cream.
9. It's 8 oz of mozzarella cheese.
10. It's 1 of grated parmesan cheese.
11. You need of butter.

Baked ziti can become dry for several reasons. When assembling the dish, be sure to cover the pasta with enough of the sauce so that the noodles don't dry out. Also, to prevent moisture from evaporating while cooking, cover the dish tightly with foil. Baked Ziti is a classic baked pasta dish.

Baked Ziti instructions

1. Cook pasta according to package..
2. In a large skillet, brown onion and sausage ovef medium heat. Drain the fat. Add minced garlic and cook for a minute or so. Add spaghetti sauce and Italian seasoning and simmer for 15 mins..
3. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 9x13 baking dish. Layer as follows: 1/2 of the ziti, 1/2 of the sauce mixture, provolone cheese, sour cream, remaining ziti, remaining sauce mixture and then sprinkle mozzarella cheese on top then the grated parmesan cheese..
4. Bake for 30 minutes in ghe preheated oven or until cheeses are melted. You may want to cover it for the first 20 minutes with foil and then let the cheese melt and brown for the last 10 minutes..
5. Optional: Serve with garlic knots (our fav) or garlic toast. Enjoy!.

It's basically some kind of tomato or meat sauce baked in a dish with some kind of cheese and, of course, ziti noodles—unless you're me, then you use mostaciolli noodles. Some people just use tomato/marinara sauce. That, of course, would never fly in this house. Our baked ziti recipe is a dish all cooks should have in their repertoire. Baked macaroni dishes like ziti combine cooked pasta with a sauce, vegetable, and/or meat -- and plenty of cheese.