Baked Ziti Recipe
Sauce recipe + Meatball Recipe
Baked Ziti Recipe
More pictures at the bottom
It’s Sunday morning and we are coming off an insane card. A lot of people got put on their ass. We need a pick me up. Sundays are for sauce! None of this gravy bullshit. It’s Sunday Sauce. After this recipe you will not be going back to jarred sauce regardless of how lazy you are ;)
Baked Ziti Ingredients
Sauce
Two cans Cento San Marzano peeled tomatoes (NO BASIL)
One can tomato paste
Garlic
Olive oil
Beef bone (this can be a soup bone or you can buy short ribs or any other beef with a bone in)
Parmigiana Rind
Salt + pepper
Meatballs
80/20 ground beef
Ground pork (optional)
Garlic
Parmigiana
Loaf of sourdough
Italian seasonings
Salt + pepper
Ricotta
Ziti
Ziti noodles (1 box will be fine. Don’t go cheap on your pasta)
Ricotta
Parmigiana
Sauce (above)
Meatballs (above)
Mozzarella
Bread!!!!!
Now get to the store because this sauce needs to go on the stove! To start your sauce you need to mince up your garlic. Don’t be shy garlic makes everything better. Once minced, put olive oil in your sauce pot and sauté your garlic. You can also throw in your beef bone or short ribs now. Brown on both sides.
Once garlic is sautéed dump both cans of tomatoes in the pot. Add salt and pepper to taste. Use more pepper than you would think. Add parmigiana rind and let your sauce simmer. Make sure you stir it every once in a while so the bottom doesn’t burn. Once simmering turn on low heat and cook for a few hours. Make sure you don’t burn your sauce. This is low heat and you need to keep stirring.
While your sauce cooks you can cook your pasta. Make sure they are Al Dente because they are going to be baked as well.
You also have time to start making your meatballs. It’s Sunday, nothings a rush. The sauce is cooking nice and slow. Turn on the oven to 375 at your leisure. Slice up your sour dough loaf and toast it in the oven. You’re making breadcrumbs so make sure your toast is well done. Once done let it cool down. Once cool I literally just crumbled it with my hands on to a plate. If you have a food processor you can use that as well. But as you cook more and more you will find you don’t need anything fancy. You can get shit done with your hands. Add salt, pepper, Italian seasonings and parmigiana to your bread mixture and boom, you made breadcrumbs that are 10 times better than anything you can buy at the store.
Get a big mixing bowl and put your ground beef and pork in the bowl. I typically do use both ground beef and pork and the ratio I use is about 3/4 ground beef 1/4 pork, but you don’t need to use the pork. If you already had ground beef in the freezer, that will do! Add your meat, add your bread crumbs, minced garlic, more parmigiana, salt and pepper and about half a cup of ricotta in the bowl. I use ricotta instead of an egg. It helps bind the meatball and gives great flavor. Mix together. You want to mix with your hands. Make sure everything is mixed well, but you don’t want to over work your meat.
Once mixed start making your meatballs. The size is completely up to you! Put them on a cookie sheet and bake at 375 for about 15 min. Rotate them half way through. I bake my meatballs out of pure convenience and I found it doesn’t sacrifice flavor. If you want you can brown the outside on the stove top in a frying pan. Both methods work. I make a bunch of meatballs at once, so I bake mine. You also don’t want your meatballs to be completely cooked through. You are going to finish them in the sauce.
Your sauce has now been cooking a while. It’s time to get it to the consistency you want. Take the bone/meat out and fish out the parmigiana rind (or what’s left of it) You can dump the pot into a blender, but what I do is take a potato masher and crush the tomatoes right in the pot. They have been cooking a while so it doesn’t take much to break them up. You might think this will make a really chunky sauce. Nope. The cooking process breaks everything down and even without a blender you will have a pretty smooth sauce. Once you’ve done that stir in about a tablespoon of tomato paste to thicken a bit.
Take your meatballs and put them in the sauce and continue to cook on low heat for another hour or so. This will finish cooking your meatballs and add even more flavor to that sauce
Your sauce and meatballs are done. Your noodles are cooked. It’s time to put everything together. Take a baking dish and add a layer of sauce to the bottom. Then add your noodles. Add parmigiana and mozzarella and mix together (again I use my hands). Add sauce and make sure all the pasta is coated. Add your meatballs. You can add them whole or break them up! Add dollops of ricotta throughout the dish. Top with a good layer of mozzarella and parm and it’s time to bake. Bake at 375 until done. I don’t time anything, but should be about 20 min ish. Just watch your cheese and once it’s melted and browned a bit on top you are done!
While that cooks make sure you heat up your bread and slice it up! Need bread with pasta
That’s how you make a good sauce and meatballs. It’s simple and it’s in the simplicity that makes it good. I’ve played around with so many sauce recipes and I finally started making a good tomato sauce when I stopped adding so much shit to it. Let the tomato be the star. Same thing goes for meatballs. Italian cooking seems simple because it’s few ingredients, but with few ingredients there’s no where to hide. It takes love and time. Let me know how it comes out!
