Manicotti: An Easy Dinner Idea

Have to get dinner on the table, but don’t really have a lot of time. This easy recipe will have dinner on the table in no time.

Mom life if hectic and sometimes we forget to prepare for dinner, so we are standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator wide open, trying to see what dinner miracle we can come up with. Try this meal and make the magic happen.

Ingredients

Manicotti Noodles: Use manicotti noodles, but if you don’t have this type, large jumbo shells will work just fine too. I used two boxes of manicotti noodles to feed my family of 6.

Cheese: I used 16 oz of ricotta cheese, 2 cups of parmesan cheese and 3 cups of mozzarella cheese.

Spinach: This helps to add some vegetables in and the kids won’t even notice. Baby spinach or regular spinach will work just fine. Use as much or as little as you like.

Italian Seasoning: Use as much as you like. I used 2 tablespoons.

Egg: The egg is used to hold all the cheeses together. I used two eggs.

Pasta Sauce: You can use marinara, spaghetti sauce, meat sauce, or whatever type of sauce you have in your kitchen. I used 2 to 3 jars of sauce. You don’t want dry noodles.

Sweet Italian Sausage: It can be the ground type or the sausage links. I used one pound and I threw some minced garlic and diced onion in as I was cooking it.

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook manicotti according to the package and add a little salt to the boiling water. Don’t over cook it, leave it a little firm, so it’s easy to stuff. It will cook more in the oven.

Cook the sausage.

In a bowl, mix all the ingredients together. Both eggs, all of the ricotta, half of the parmesan, half of the mozzarella and sausage. Add salt, pepper and parsley.

Stuff the mixture into each manicotti noodle.

In a 9×13 inch dish, line the bottom with a thin layer of sauce to cover the entire bottom of the dish. Line the manicotti side by side, try not to overlap. Cover with remaining sauce and remaining mozzarella and parmesan cheeses. You can add more cheese on top if you like.

Bake covered for 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10 minutes or so, until cheese has melted and is nice and bubbly.