Our Favorite Baked Ziti (2024)

FAQs

Why is baked ziti so good? ›

Baked Ziti is so much more than just a Bolognese pasta bake…. It's a big, juicy baked pasta that's loaded with flavour from a healthy dose of seasonings and topped with a generous amount of cheese. Cosy food that's easy enough for midweek yet worthy of company. Bonus: perfect freezer friendly meal!

Ziti is a hollow, tube-shaped pasta, and it's also the name of a baked, cheesy dish you can make with ziti. In Italian, ziti is short for maccheroni di zita, or "macaroni of the bride." This probably comes from ziti's longstanding popularity as part of a wedding buffet, particularly in Southern Italy.

Simply place aluminum foil over the ziti and bake at 350°F for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking until a knife inserted comes out hot and the cheese is completely melted.

Baked ziti is tossed with an extruder style, dried pasta similar to a penne, and then tossed with marinara sauce, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, and then baked in the oven. Lasagna is made by layering pasta sheets, often fresh pasta sheets, marinara sauce, ricotta cheese and mozzarella, and then baked.

Baked ziti is a casserole with ziti pasta and a Neapolitan-style tomato sauce. It is characteristic of Italian-American cuisine.

Ziti is a very popular tube shaped pasta. Ziti gets its name from the word zita, which means bride. In Naples, Ziti is the classic pasta served at weddings as the zita/bride's pasta. Ziti goes well with fresh, light sauces like olive oil or a simple fresh tomato sauce.

The ever-popular Ziti, tube-shaped pasta enjoyed the world over, gets its name from the word for bridegroom. In southern Italy, especially in Campania and Sicily, baked ziti has long been served at wedding celebration banquets, and this nostalgic and delicious tradition continues today.

A medium-sized, tubular pasta, ziti goes best with chunky sauces and meat dishes that can get trapped in the hollow centers. It's also well known as the go-to pasta for baked ziti, a pasta casserole dish with lots of cheese and sauce.

Etymology. Italian, plural of zito "a piece of tubular pasta," probably short for maccheroni di zita, literally, "bride's macaroni"

Layer half the mozzarella into the pasta and reserve half for the top. It bakes up golden-brown — the hallmark of a good pasta casserole. Make sure there is enough sauce to use as a layer at the top, under the mozzarella. This will insulate the pasta and keep it from drying out.

Does baked ziti contain ricotta cheese? ›

Add half the pasta to the baking dish, top with dollops of the ricotta, the remaining spinach, and scoop the remaining pasta on top. Top with the mozzarella and pecorino cheese. Drizzle with olive oil and bake until the cheese is browned, 16 to 22 minutes.

(You want to undercook the pasta slightly, as it will continue to cook in the oven. A good way to do this is cook it 2 minutes less than you normally would if preparing it al dente.) Reserving 1 cup of the pasta cooking liquid, drain pasta and rinse with cool water; set aside while the tomato sauce finishes cooking.

Substitutions for Ziti

Ziti is a pretty common pasta shape in most areas, but you can substitute penne pasta if you can't find it. You want a substantial short pasta shape with places to hold the sauce and meat.

They're similar, but we like to use rigatoni for its ability to hold onto the sauce! You can always swap out ziti for rigatoni but make sure you check the cooking times. When it comes to baked ziti versus baked rigatoni, they're both made from cheesy, tomato-based sauces with ground beef.

Baked Ziti has the least sugar per 100 grams. Awesome Lasagna has the most fiber per 100 grams. Baked Ziti has the most protein per 100 grams.

The baking adds a crispy crust that is such a delicious contrast to the tender goodness of the dish. The challenge is to how to get the pasta to turn out just right.