Cheesy Stuffed Shells with spinach #Traderjoe#pasta #dinner

Come to my kitchen to learn how to
prepare this easy but impressive Italian pasta dish of cheesy stuffed shells with spinach! Most of the ingredients are from Trader Joe’s which makes for a budget friendly meal the whole family will enjoy! Don’t miss this one!#traderjoes #pasta #dinner #lunch #traderjoes #easymeal #italianfood #2024 #trader joes new items #traderjoeslist #ricotta

Everybody and welcome back to my kitchen where Carla is cooking you know they saying I got it for my mama well this recipe I did I got it for my mama this is a recipe you don’t often see in a restaurant and so I decided to make a

Little Italian comfort food today now before I tell you my mama’s recipe I want you to hit the Subscribe button hit the Subscribe button so you don’t miss any more of my cooking videos and if you’ve got something to say comment like it share it whatever you think all right

Guys let’s get started so we’re doing doing uh jumbo stuffed shells so we’ve got our stuffed shells here we’ve got a whole milk we got to cheese that we’re going to go ahead and season off with some spices and cheese and we’re going to throw some spinach into our mixture

Cuz we like spinach in this house now we’re going to take some help from the store regarding our sauce guys not making any homemade sauce today I’m just don’t have time for so what I did do though was I went to Trader Joe’s and I

Picked up a bre brand new sauce it’s a rosatella pasta sauce so I’ve got two jars uh that should be more than enough and I’ve got an extra jar of just a random sauce in reserve just in case I need more sauce all right let’s go ahead and get started audio

Jungle all of the ingredients are from Trader Joe’s with the exception of the actual shells themselves we don’t carry big jumbo shells so I went elsewhere for that I’ve got some whole milk work go to cheese that we’re going to season up we’ll talk about that and I didn’t say

We’re going to use a little bit of spinach uh so many variations of the shells you could do meat you could do cheese you we’ll talk about that after as well all right I did it gave us a little head start though I’ve got our oven preheating to 355 because we’re

Going to um mix and fill and do all that um and then we’re going to throw them into the oven you can see I’ve got some water boiling I figured you didn’t want to watch me boil water right we all know how to boil water water so I’ve got a

Pot of water here I am going to go ahead and liberally salt that because this is going to be uh for our shells all right great now what I did um to kind of make sure kind of gauge how many shells I needed um I’m not going to go with a

Super large pan because I’m just cooking for two you can totally get your big large one and fill it with all the shells this is going to be enough for about two of us now Granite they’re not cooked yet but I wanted to get a little

Bit of a gauge of how many I could fit into here I went ahead and threw some extra in case a few Break um or you know once they cook I can wedge a few extras in so let’s go ahead and gently get these shells into the water now we are

Also going to slightly undercook these shells why great question well when you bake them it’s going to add to your cooking time and you do not want a mushy soggy shell most of the times when you’re cooking pasta probably all of the time you’re cooking pasta no one wants

Mushy pasta we call that alente and so we’re going to cook these shells to Al Dente also it’s going to make the stuffing process a little bit easier for us if they were all mushy that would make it hard to stuff all right our um dish is over there waiting for us now

We’re going to stuff this with uh home milk Rota cheese um we’re going to throw some Parmesan cheese in there shredded we’re going to have one lightly beaten egg so we’re going to go ahead and do that oh I think I got a bit of shell in there guys you don’t want any

Shells in your shells oh my gosh that was funny right all right um so let’s get a fork let’s lightly beat that just like that now we’re going to take this whole tub you guys it’s one lb of whole milk regard to cheese I strongly recommend using the whole milk um

Um as opposed to a part skim and I always feel like if I’m eating a meal you know like amazing stuffed shells with cheese I’m not going to I’m not going to skimp right I’m not looking to save calories here all right so we’re going to go ahead and give that just a

Gentle turn there I’m going to give myself a nice healthy handful of Parmesan cheese okay you could use any you could use Romano uh parmesan regano whatever You’ like we like a little heat in this house so we’re using a little a little palmful of crushed red

Pepper and you could totally chop up fresh garlic but I’m not I am going to use garlic powder I do love the seasonings from Trader Joe’s guys they’re like $1.99 I mean for the most part they’re all under three bucks and they’re just good quality um seasonings

We don’t have an Italian seasoning at Trader Joe’s so Trader Joe’s if you’re listening we could really use one one um so I’ve just got a little bit of Italian seasoning in this guy just a couple shakes and out of the corner of my eye I

See these shells and so I just want to make sure that we’re not losing track of these guys okay probably about maybe 7 minutes maybe on this but we’re going to test it out um all right we’re going to do all right guys so now we’re going to

Go ahead and chop up some parsley and some spinach my mom is a h huge fan of using fresh herbs especially in this dish we want to do enough for the inside of the filling but we also want enough for some garnish so I’m going to go

Ahead and grab some more I do love parsley for garnish um on a lot of dishes it just is pretty you know it’s pretty and they always say that you eat with your eyes first all right we’ve got our parsley we’re going to set our mixture aside for

A minute so we’ve got H parsley and now we’re going to do some spinach now I’m not going to take take the stems off unless they’re crazy long like that one okay so if they’re obviously long I will take them off uh they do tender up a bit

Anyways you know once they’re under all that sauce and cheese and you know spinach it really kind of wilts down so it looks like a lot it’s really not now I am going to give this guy a little extra chop because we don’t want big long

Pieces all right we got some jumping off the cutting board and of the floor all right let’s go ahead and check these shells again we don’t want to lose track of these guys right all right and they’re still feeling pretty solid there so we’re going to we’re going to let

That go all right let’s add in our parsley and let’s add in our fresh um spinach now you could use frozen spinach here’s the only downfall to that guys I kind of wouldn’t recommend that because it’s going to hold a lot of water so if

You do use frozen spinach you need to uh take it out maybe 30 minutes prior you need to take a cheesecloth a towel somehow some way you need to strain that spinach cuz you certainly don’t want uh watery mixture for these shells so again you could you could do that if you were

Going to do meat you guys you could just Brown up your meat you could do pork you could do beef what whatever you like uh you could even use a chicken sausage I suppose if you were looking to maybe save a few calories um and you would

Just you know stuff it with meat instead of the cheese some people do both all right let’s go ahead and taste this guys M excellent we did a good job seasoning that up all right so we’re going to set that aside um check back on these shells

We’re going to let those work a little bit more and I’ll be back okay guys these shells are are just about done maybe 1 minute longer so let’s go ahead and prep our dish here um first of all we got to go ahead and put a little bit

Of sauce at the bottom of the pan all right so we’re going to do that this is my first time using this sauce I can see it’s definitely a little on the thicker side it was a recommendation from one of my buddies he said it’s a

Cross between an alfredo and a red sauce and he’s like hey this would be really good with some stuffed shells and I said you know what that sounds actually delicious and that’s when I called my mama so all right great this way when the shells sit at

The bottom two things number one you’re going to get some sauce uh everywhere on each bite and the other thing is they won’t slide around when we go to stuff them okay pretty sure these are done for us all right they are remember guys they’re going to be all nice and bubbly

With the cheese and the sauce when they go into the oven and they’re going to to go ahead and cook a little bit more that’s why we got to take him out all right so let’s go ahead and drain this guy nice Good not one broken shell look how beautiful okay really really nice going to go ahead and um put some olive oil on these guys we don’t want them sticking around and we need to let them cool off so I’m going to transfer them into another Bowl all

Right we need to let them cool off because we got to handle them right we’ve got to hold we’re going to have to hold them and we’re going to have to stuff these little buggers all right guys we’ve got our shells nice and uh cool if you don’t have that much time or

You just want to speed up the process go ahead and hit them under some cold cold water I want to show you something this is what I mean by Broken shell okay that’s why I threw a few extra in every now and then that’s going to happen and that’s okay all right yeah

They are cooked perfectly little little hard still which is great all right now what you want to do before we stuff these got to make sure that it’s actually a single shell in there what do I mean by that well when you go through your shells you could find that they’re

Actually they’re double shelled and so just make sure um that it’s one single shell and you’re just going to kind of open it like that all right so let’s go ahead and get rolling here gang all right we’re going to put that there and to get me a nice big

Spoon you know what I’m going to do a big and a small teaspoon tablespoon let’s see which one maybe a teaspoon actually so we can really control um how this is going to go all right this is requires some patience guys so you know if I’m doing it you

Could totally do it too I know you can it’s what I love about cooking at home I love cooking restaurant style meals um number one affordable ones cuz we all know when you go out to dinner um you you’re going to pay double right at least gosh forbid you have a glass of

Wine or something not now your Bill’s even more all right um I went a little over stuff on that okay and that is okay because like I said this is not your perfect perfect dish ooh and I can tell already I’m going to need a towel on

This guy cuz hands are going to get a little messy all right and so we’re just going to keep rolling away this guy’s ripped we’re going to save him for later if we need him we’ll use them but otherwise I’ve got plenty of good ones in here all right so teaspoon works

Best and so I’m kind of using my thumb there just to kind of get it in there as well look how nice and we’re just setting them in the dish okay guys I went ahead and I stuffed all of these beautiful shells there are 13 shells in here one pound of

Racha cheese and um so far one jar of pasta sauce so super easy um now for all the fun part right is if we didn’t have enough cheesy goodness in there now we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to put more uh parmesan cheese just liberally sprinkle that all around I’m

Going to give me a few shakes of some uh basil just a little bit right on top and some pepper we’ve already got the crush red pepper but a little more black pepper and our shredded mozzarella guys again this is another area you can just do it however how however you want however

Much cheese you want how whatever kind of cheese you want um all right so I layered the cheese in there but now I want to go ahead and I want to get this this pasta sauce on top as well this is a little bit of a thicker sauce

And it’s my first time using it but I heard it was so delicious that I just took his word for it and you guys it looks absolutely delicious you know I’m all about using a Jared sauce I love a homemade sauce if my mom was doing her recipe she would

Have her homemade sauce it’s nice to have it in the freezer and then when you want to do a dish like this you can just pull it out and use it but you know what I have gotten a little bit lazy in my day and you know what we’re all busy

You’re busy I’m busy and sometimes I just don’t have time to make a homemade sauce so I’m taking all the help from Trader Joe’s all right and you know what guys we can go ahead and add more when it comes out all right now I’m going to

Hit it with just a little more cheese just for presentation I want it all beautiful and bubbly and then after it’s all baked M that’s outstanding just like that we’re going to get this guy in here 350 for about 20 minutes and then I’m going to show

You how amazing it is all right guys it’s time to get the shells out it’s been about 20 25 minutes I put it on broal the last minute just to get it ooh all nice and brown guys look at that oh my gosh that’s going to be so so good

Right so good all right let’s hit it with some parsley beautiful beautiful guys okay now it’s the time where I get to dig into these shells so let’s scoot this sky over just like that I got myself a teeny tiny little spatula I don’t even know really

Where it came from but I’m just going to go ahead oh my gosh I’m going to dig into this holy holy cow you guys look at the cheese is so yummy all right I’m going to grab one more wow is this going to be good guys you could totally do a

Little side salad with this you could have some garlic bread you can do it however you would like now it’s pretty steamy but I got a taste all right guys it is steamy hot oh this looks so good look at the cheese M wow that is so so good you guys so so

Good Mom thanks for the recipe I see why this is in your wheelhouse it’s a good one m so so good taste the garlic the spinach love how we seasoned up the rata and you know what game you really got to cook those shells just the way we did

Cuz now they are just perfect guys that sauce from Trader Joe’s brand new item it’s a good one and I’ll see you guys back in my Kitchen