Did you say five ingredients?
Yes! This easy recipe from Trial and Eater has only five ingredients. And none of them involve chopping! You can literally prep this in ten minutes.
The ingredients:
- 1 lb box of ziti
- 24-ounce jar marinara sauce, spaghetti sauce, or 3 cups homemade sauce
- 15 ounce container ricotta cheese
- 3 eggs
- 2-8 ounce packages shredded mozzarella cheeseI recently had gall bladder surgery and was getting my energy back slowly. I wanted to make dinner, but wanted it to be easy-peasy. I remembered this recipe that I had made before and noted that I actually had all of the ingredients in my pantry/fridge. Well, I did need to make a few substitutions to make it work. I didn’t have ziti but I did have penne. So I actually made baked penne. I also had a big ball of mozzarella in my refrigerator that I had bought two weeks ago to make a salad with and never got around to using it for that purpose. So I hand grated the mozzarella. If you shred your own cheese, it doesn’t contain the powdery stuff that the pre-shredded cheese comes with to keep the cheese from sticking together. And it melts much nicer, too.
Here is the penne cooked and drained. You can substitute any pasta of your choice. I’ve used ziti and macaroni before. I would stick to tube shaped pasta for the best looking casserole, but I’m sure you could use broken spaghetti pieces and it would be just as delicious.
Ready for the oven! Doesn’t that shredded cheese look good? I am a cheese fanatic and I could not wait until it was finished and ready to dig into.
I AM DROOLING!! I wish you could hear the popping, bubbling of the cheese as I took it out of the oven.
I paired it with garlic bread and a fresh salad.Five ingredients, ten minute prep, 45 minutes in the oven, and easy clean-up. You couldn’t ask for an easier vegetarian comfort food. You could add ground beef or turkey to the sauce to make it a little bit heartier as well. Such a versatile, quick meal! Hope you enjoy it!!
If you found any other additions/deletions/substitutions that work well with this recipe, I would love to know how you changed it to suit you. Add your comments below.
Baked ziti is one of my favorites so I am totally going to try this recipe. I love that it is vegetarian and only 5 ingredients! Seems really easy to make and that is what I am all about. A dinner that guests think you spent all day making but in reality it only took about an hour in all is something I love!
It is really easy!! Hope you enjoy!!
Great visuals for this post. I love the step-by-step visuals and I appreciate that you advise of noodle substitutions because I find that I never seem to have exactly what the recipe calls for and I have to experiment a bit. I’ve never tried to make baked ziti but this recipe seems so simple that you can’t mess it up!
I substitute pastas all the time. It is a very easy recipe to make and I also love the fact that the 5 ingredients are something I usually have in my pantry. Thanks for your comment!