The Best Baked Ziti - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with the best baked ziti that's right i am half italian and was raised eating the finest italian american cuisine and i filmed almost 2 000 recipe videos so when you consider all those facts it seems incredible that i've never posted a recipe for big ziti but hey better late than never and hopefully i 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 get started with a pound and a half of italian sausage and for this you can use the hot or the mild or as i'm about to do use half of each and before we brown this up we're going to have to remove the casing which is done very simply by making a cut down the length at which point we'll go ahead and simply peel that off so i went ahead and did that to the other three and then headed to the stove where i have a sauce pot placed over high heat with a little bit of olive oil in it and we'll transfer our sausage in along with one large diced yellow onion and what we'll do here is cook this stirring crumbling and breaking up that meat as we do until our onions soften and turn translucent and our pieces of meat start to brown up nicely which is going to take you a few minutes so don't be in a hurry and what we'll do when we think we're getting close to sauteing that long enough is go ahead and toss in a few dry herbs specifically some dry oregano some dried thyme and some dried rosemary and we'll go ahead and stir that in and cook it for another minute or so at which point we're gonna add not one but two full jars of marinara sauce which is about six cups total but wait there's more once we dump those in we'll rinse each of those jars out with about a cup of water and we will add that as well and stir everything together and then while still on high heat we'll wait for this to come up to a simmer and when it does and it's looking a little something like this we'll go ahead and give it a stir and then back our heat down to medium low and then we'll just let this simmer gently for about an hour or so stirring occasionally at which point assuming we're happy with how it tastes it's ready to use and by the way once this is simmered or during the simmering process if you want to skim some of that fat off the top that's not a bad idea and i usually do and probably should have here but for whatever reason this time it didn't look like i had that much so i just went ahead and stirred it in and that's it once our sauce is done we'll simply set that aside and move on to cooking our ziti which as usual we'll be doing in some very very well salted water right the water should literally taste like the ocean and if you've never been to the ocean trust me that water is pretty salty and what we'll do is give that a good stir and then cook it but a couple minutes under the package directions okay we do want this a hair under done since it is going to 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 to make this slightly undercooked and then what we'll do is go ahead and drain that very well and then we'll transfer that into a large bowl and then we will carefully add our sauce which i didn't do i just went ahead and dumped it in and it basically splashed everything except by some miracle not the lens and then what we'll want to do is take a big spoon or spatula and give this a very thorough stirring and that's because it's a proven scientific fact the tubes like nothing more than to be filled with stuff so as we stir this all that amazingly flavorful sauce is going to be pulled into that pasta which by the way is why i use about 50 more sauce than most of the recipes call for right the only thing worse than no bake cd is a dry big ziti but anyway we'll go ahead and give that a good stir and then i like to let it rest for about five minutes or so and while that's hanging out getting good we can go ahead and generously olive oil a large casserole dish at which point is time to move on to final assembly and what we'll do first is go ahead and transfer in 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 just go ahead and dump half in and spread it out but my theory is by using this some of that sauce is going to drip through which means my top layer of pasta is going to be a little saucier than the bottom layer which because of a little thing called gravity i think works out better and prevents our top from getting too dry but no matter what you use once half of it's been transferred in it is time to add a layer of cheese and we're going to be using three of them starting with a beautiful basket ricotta and we'll go ahead and dollop exactly half of that over the top and then we'll give that just a little bit of a spread okay not too much but a little bit and then next up we will scatter exactly half of our mozzarella over the top and as you can probably see i cut that into small cubes instead of grating it which i think texturally works out a lot better not to mention depending on the moisture content mozzarella can be kind of tricky to grate and then once half our mozzarella has been scattered over we will finish up 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 same as the first we'll go ahead and transfer over the rest of our pasta and sauce and again you could probably just gently dump it over and spread it but i like to be a little bit careful because i don't want to mess up that beautiful cheese layer we just created and because of the tool i was using this layer was definitely a little saucier and yes i could be overthinking that step but since this comes out so amazingly well maybe not but anyway i finished up by giving that the old shake-a-shaker at which point we can go ahead and place on the rest of our cheese only this time because it's the top layer we are not going to spread our ricotta we're going to leave it nice dollops like that and then just like the first layer we'll finish up with our mozzarella and pecorino or parmesan like i said both will work so you decide i mean you are after all the iced tea of your big zd but no matter what you use just make sure you don't use that stuff already graded out of the package and that you graded yourself otherwise you just played yourself and that's it once the rest of our cheese has been applied over the top we'll go ahead and clean up those edges a little bit before transferring this into the center of a 375 degree oven for about 30 to 35 minutes or until our casserole is piping hot and the cheese is beautifully melted and just barely starting to get golden brown okay so that looks just about perfect and we really don't want to go any longer than that since everything in here is cooked and really all we're doing is heating everything through and yes if you have to you could serve this immediately but i think it's going to be much better if you let it rest for about 10 to 15 minutes and while we're waiting we can go ahead and garnish with the obligatory chopped italian parsley which of course is a mandatory requirement for any and all italian-american casserole type dishes and that's it once our baked ziti has rested and been parsleed we can go ahead and serve that up which i'll do by cutting out a nice large portion with this spoon okay this pan should easily serve eight although i think i just took about a sixth of it and man was that looking and smelling good so i quickly tossed over another pinch of parsley then i grabbed a fork and dug right in and as i touched on earlier one of my main complaints with a lot of big z recipes is they're just too dry which is absolutely not the case with this version okay our strategy of using extra sauce not to mention extra sausage and cheese really worked out well and i could not have been happier with how this came out oh except possibly for one thing as i mentioned i should probably have skimmed some of that fat off the top of the sauce since with all that meat and cheese involved we have plenty of fat to go around but anyway that's it how i like to make baked ziti okay i'm not saying we should stop making lasagna but when it comes to meaty cheesy saucy pasta based casseroles baked ziti especially this version is very very tough to beat speaking of which in the italian american community this is a very popular dish for potlucks and if you go to one of those there is a 100 chance someone will bring a pan of this and probably a 90 chance more than one person brings it and if you bring this and they bring basically 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 whether you're going to make this to crush the competition at a potluck dinner or you're just looking for something delicious to whip up to eat during that sopranos marathon either way i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 999,476

Keywords: baked, ziti, recipe, pasta, casserole, lasagna, macaroni, Italian, party, pot luck, chef, john, food, Wishes, cooking, dinner

Id: LA548B4UGRw

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020