Sausage pasta bake recipe plus all the details on how you can turn it into a freezer meal. Also get a little formula for turning any leftover pasta into a bake!
Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian
Keyword baked ziti with sausage, italian sausage pasta, sausage pasta bake
Combine ricotta, eggs, 3/4 cup of the parmesan, 3/4 cup of the mozzarella, cream, cornstarch, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Set aside.
Boil pasta until just shy of al dente, it should have a bit of a bite to it when tasted. It shouldn't be crunchy.
While the pasta cooks, heat oil in a medium saucepan until just shimmering.
Cook sausage until browned and cooked through. Remove all but 2 teaspoons grease if necessary.
Add garlic cloves and cook briefly, about 1 minute.
Add the dried herbs cook another minute.
Add the canned tomato products and sugar. Simmer for about 5 minutes.
When pasta is ready, add it to the ricotta mixture. Add about 1 cup of the tomato sauce. Stir to combine.
Pour pasta/ricotta mixture into a 9x13 baking dish.
Pour remaining sauce evenly over the top.
Sprinkle remaining parmesan and mozzarella evenly over the top.
Bake covered with foil for 25 minutes, remove foil and cook uncovered about 25 more minutes until bubbly and cheese is just starting to brown.
Video
Notes
You can substitute the ricotta cheese for cottage cheese if you'd like, it doesn't make a huge difference. Or do half and half. Whatever you have in your fridge is fine!If you like to time your pasta when you cook it, you'll cook it for about three-quarters of the cooking time. Tasting it will give you a good idea of how close you are.As always, feel free to substitute the dried herbs with fresh ones, just remember to double the measurements.If you have leftover sauce {like my Homemade Marinara!} or would just like to use a jarred sauce, feel free to substitute that in place of making the quick sauce in the recipe. Use about 45 ounces total, or about 5 1/4 cups.You can assemble this pasta bake and freeze it before baking it. I usually make this whole recipe and divide it into two disposable 8x8 baking pans for our family. You could also make smaller portions in disposable bread pans, probably four of them and freeze those for having single or double serving quick meals. You'd want to thaw them and bake according to the instructions in the recipe (lowering the cooking time for smaller portions) - or you can put a frozen pasta bake in a cold oven, preheat the oven and bake at a 325Fº for the first 10 minutes, then up the temperature to 350Fº for the rest of the time.If you made the whole pasta bake but have leftovers, I cut them up into whatever size portions I want after it's totally cooled, place them on a sheet of foil with the edges turned up, and then in a zip-top freezer bag. When you want to bake it, take the pasta bake and foil out, put it in an appropriately sized pan, sprinkle with a couple tablespoons of water, cover with foil, and bake at 350Fº until warmed through.