One-Hour Ziti with Ayla

Regular readers of this blog will know I don't share a lot of recipes. Some of you may recall that one time I tried a new dish and it tasted like shoe. I like cooking that's easy, and preferably something that yields a lot of leftovers so I can spend my time doing important things like watching every TV show AMC has ever produced. My friend Ayla, on the other hand, loves to cook and totally came through for me with this one. She's here today with a delicious baked ziti recipe that's making me drool all over my laptop. To hear more from Ayla, be sure to check out her blog and fun Etsy shop. Now let's get to that food!

Hello readers of Little Nostalgia!!! I'm Ayla from the blog Eyelah. Today I'm going to share an easy recipe that I made for a potluck I had at my home. I got the idea from the Baked Ziti recipe on the Food Network website. It's really easy to make and it only takes about an hour.

Ingredients: 
Penne Pasta
1lb of ground beef or ground turkey
2 jars of Pasta sauce
half of fresh onion
mince 6 garlic cloves
1 tsp Adobo seasoning(optional)
1 Tbsp of Olive Oil
2 bags of mozzarella cheese



Step 1.
Boil water for pasta.

Step 2.
You want to brown the ground beef or ground turkey. I like to use about 1 tsp of Adobo seasoning because it adds flavor to meat but that is optional. After the ground beef/turkey has been brown and cooked you want to drain the oil. Set aside.

Step 3.
After the ground beef/turkey is brown you want to add the olive oil, minced garlic cloves, minced half of onion, and 2 jars of pasta sauce. You want to cook this on low heat. Just to let it simmer a bit while the pasta cooks.

Step 4.
You want to put the penne pasta in the boiling water for 8 minutes. If you cook it longer than 8minutes it may get too soggy and may not cook very well when it's in the oven.



Step 5.
After the pasta is cooked, drain the pasta and then add your meat sauce with the pasta. After you stir in your meat sauce, you want to add 1 bag of mozzarella and stir until melted. Afterwards pour pasta meat sauce mixture into a casserole pan.

Step 6.
Use the second bag of mozzarella cheese on top of the pasta mix.

Step 7.
You then want to cover the casserole pan with foil and then put in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 30-40 minutes.



After 30-40 minutes you can take it out of the oven and enjoy!! You should probably let it cool off a little bit.

Mmmmmm. That really is easy. It's good to have another option for busy weeks when you already know you won't want to cook every night. What's your go-to dish? Maybe you do the pasta thing, too? Or maybe you loooove to cook and do it everyday no matter what?

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