The Ultimate Cheesy Baked Ziti Recipe

The Ultimate Cheesy Baked Ziti Recipe

So, hey besties. If you want to make this super easy, super delicious, super cheesy baked ziti with me, come along with me in this video and I’m going to show you exactly everything I do. So, first thing we’re going to is get us some ground turkey. And if you don’t like ground turkey, you can also substitute this out for ground beef. I just prefer to use turkey. And we’re going to go ahead and season our ground turkey. Now, you can season it any way you like, but the seasonings I’m going to use is just a little bit of garlic butter. I’m definitely going to go in with some roasted and garlic chicken seasoning. I’m gonna add some onion powder and some garlic powder because you can’t have one. You got to have both. Definitely gonna add some fresh herbs in there, which is going to be some cilantro and some parsley. And then we’re going to go ahead and add in some allpurpose chicken seasoning. Now, to me, turkey and chicken go in the same category, so those seasonings are going to actually work well together. Of course, I have to go ahead and add in some smoked paprika because we grown. And then we’re going to add in just a little bit of soy, low sodium soy because I just like the flavor that it gives. And then we’re going to go ahead and mix everything together. Now, you want to make sure that you cook your turkey all the way through. This is not something that you want to have underdone because you do not want to have anybody’s stomach rumbling. So, we’re going to make sure that we cook our turkey until everything is completely brown, just like you would do ground beef. Now, while our turkey is cooking, we’re going to go ahead and start working on our noodles. But before we work on our noodles, make sure you follow your girl on all social media platforms. It’s posted right up there above. Now, I’m going to go ahead and make sure my water is boiling. I’m going to salt my water. Once I salt my water, I went on ahead and add in my pasta noodles. Now, on the box, it says that you can cook it for 12 to 13 minutes for Audente, but I’m going to cook mine for 10 because it is going back in the oven after I am done putting everything together. Now, it’s time to go ahead and work on our cheese because our noodles are boiling and our ground turkey is browning. I’m going to go ahead with a whole chunk of mozzarella cheese. And I’m just going to cut this up into little squares. You can get the one that’s already pre-shredded, but I like to use both. I like to use the ones that I chunk up into little squares for the inside. And I do like to use the shredded mozzarella cheese to put on the outside of it on top once my food is ready. Now that my noodles is done, I’m going to go ahead and add in just a little bit of olive oil. And I’m going to give it a good mix around. Now, I seen on the TV that you’re not supposed to add olive oil to your pasta while it’s cooking. You’re supposed to wait until it’s done, add it to your noodles, and then mix it around. That’s supposed to help your noodles from sticking together. They say it does not work unless you do it afterwards and not during the cooking process. So that’s exactly what I did. After everything was done and it was time to put it together, we’re going to go ahead and get a pan. Put our noodles inside of the pan and we are going to build everything in this pan just because I don’t want to do any dishes tonight. Mom is tired. So we are going to go ahead and do this a quick and easy way. After I got my noodles into the pan, it’s time to go ahead and add all of our ground turkey. And make sure you taste your ground turkey. If you feel like you need to add any more seasoning, now is the time to do so. Make sure it is seasoned to your liking. If it needs any salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, do not hesitate to add it in there. Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to be salty because we’re also going to be adding in some sauce as well. So, once I get my noodles and my ground turkey in there, I’m going to go ahead and give it a good mix. And now, it’s time to start adding all of that cheese that we chunked up. We’re going to go ahead and add it right in there. So, our food is still hot because we’re doing this fresh off of the stove. So, it is going to help the cheese start the melting process. But what’s really going to help it melt is when we stick it back in the oven after we assemble everything together. So, don’t worry about your cheese not melting. Now, I’m going to go in with some of my favorite sauce. And one of my favorite sauce is this Ragu simply roasted garlic sauce. This sauce is so good. So, if you guys have not tried this sauce, run, do not walk to the supermarket and make sure you go ahead and pick up this sauce cuz this sauce is one of the best sauce that I have had in the jar as far as spaghetti sauce. Now, I’m going to go ahead and give this a good mix right inside of the pan. Now, you got to be careful if your pan is not big enough because we don’t want any spillage on the side, but it is possible to make this work. Now, I had to go ahead and add in a second jar of pasta sauce because one jar just wasn’t enough. Now, while we’re assembling everything, getting everything together. You’re going to go ahead and cut your oven on and we’re going to start preheating our oven on 400°. We want to make sure that we get our oven nice and hot. So, when we’re going to stick our baked ziti in there, we don’t have to worry about sticking it in a cold oven. Went on ahead and added in the rest of that sauce that I had inside of a jar and mix everything together. Once everything was mixed together, it looked something like this. Everything was nice and saucy. I had a good amount of cheese spread out everywhere. So now what is next to do is we’re going to add some mozzarella cheese on top. Now you can add as little or as much as you like, depending on how cheesy you like your pasta. And we like it extra cheesy in here. So we’re going to go ahead and add a good amount of cheese on the top layer. So you can use a different blend of cheeses as well. Sometimes I like to do mozzarella and parmesan mixed together. It goes together really good in my opinion. So if you haven’t tried that blend together yet, I definitely recommend you try that. We didn’t have any parmesan today, so we’re just going to go in with mozzarella. And I’m going to go ahead and put a even amount of mozzarella all over the pan. Now, this pan was a little heavy, so when I put it in the oven, I did have to put a pan underneath it just because we didn’t want any spillage. So, I do recommend if you’re not using a large size pan or you don’t have one and you have a lot of pasta, make sure you put something underneath just to keep your oven clean and you don’t want to make a mess. Now, I’m making sure that I get enough mozzarella cuz like I told you guys, we like it real cheesy in this house and I want to make sure I’m covering the entire top layer. Went on ahead turn the bag over. Want to make sure we get every little bit of cheese out of there. And after we get all the cheese on top, it is time to go ahead put our foil on there. And we’re going to stick it in the oven. Once it came out of the oven, this is how it looked. And when I tell you, everything was smelling so good, so cheesy, so delicious. I could not wait to go ahead and start eating this. Now, you can serve this with some garlic bread. You can go ahead and make you a salad. Put you some steamed broccoli, any kind of veggies on the side, or you can have it as a meal just by itself. It is completely up to you. I like to do mine with some garlic bread and a salad, or I like to do it with a little bit of steamed veggies on the side. You also can add the veggies on the inside as well, but we are going to go ahead and start serving dinner because everybody is hungry and they cannot wait to eat. Now, I am that person when I see the pan, I am not going to cut on a corner. I’m going to go right in the middle. I’m going right for the center. I’m definitely that person. Went on ahead and started cutting it. And now we’re going to go ahead and get us a big scoop school. And we are going to try this out. And when I tell you it was a 10 out of 10. Highly recommend. If you have not put this on your dinner menu for this week, I absolutely recommend you do. And I will see you guys in my next video. Bye, besties.