BAKED ZITI RECIPE NO MEAT –LEARN TO MAKE MEATLESS BAKED ZITI

Whether the goal is to prepare breakfast for the family or invite a couple of friends for dinner, baked ziti is an awesome dish to have. To make the perfect meal, you may want to combine baked ziti with other dishes such as challah rolls, steamed veggies, mashed potatoes, etc.

And to the delight of vegetarians, there exists the meatless baked ziti that you can prepare in less than 1 hour. While our recipe herein explains the culinary steps for preparing meatless baked ziti, it may interest you that in making baked ziti, one can try a different variety of pasta rather than restrict oneself to the traditional ziti pasta. But since ziti remains our most preferred pasta variety, this post uses ziti pasta in explaining the step-by-step procedure for making meatless baked ziti.

Baked ziti is made from a mixture of (ziti) pasta, three kinds of cheese and some other ingredients, with the entire mixture, sumptuously layered on tomato sauce. Not only does this make a bubbly and eye-catching meal, but the meal is also tasty and pretty easy to make.

What Are the Ingredients for Making This Meatless Baked Ziti?

While ziti pasta is considered the principal ingredient in this recipe, there are several other ingredients that need to be added for the meat-free baked ziti to turn out as an overall sumptuous meal.

Despite being the core ingredient for making meatless baked ziti, the ziti pasta can be replaced with any pasta variety including penne, rotini and rigatoni. With that noted though, the (traditional) ziti pasta is certainly the pasta recommended in this recipe.

So, the other ingredients needed for making the meatless baked ziti are as follows:

• Parsley: This ingredient combines with tomato sauce (or any other similar sauce such as marinara sauce) just to add a hint of delicacy to the baked meat-free ziti
• Tomato sauce: Ensure you keep a generous amount of tomato sauce (or an alternative sauce) as you’ll need it
• Minced garlic: Garlic will more than likely constitute the ideal combo of aromatic ingredients for enhancing the flavour of your baked ziti
• Italian seasoning: This condiment consists of thyme, oregano, basil and rosemary, making it the perfect combo of mints that would enhance the aroma of your ziti dish
• Eggs: Adding eggs to the ingredients for this dish would help prevent the cheeses (mozzarella, ricotta and parmesan) from appearing very watery
• Mozzarella cheese: You can choose to grate mozzarella by yourself or opt for some off-the-shelf mozzarella cheese that comes shredded
• Parmesan cheese: You may pick your parmesan cheese the same way you’ve picked mozzarella
• Ricotta cheese: This is one of the (three) cheese varieties that make up the cheese combo for making the meatless baked ziti in this post. It is a kind of mild and soft cheese that you’ll find awesome for baking or culinary processes where cheese is required

To keep the ingredients in the right proportion, below is what we recommend for one pound of ziti pasta:

• Garlic –one clove of (minced) garlic
• Two eggs
• Italian seasoning –two tablespoon
• Parsley –one tablespoon
• 16 ounces of ricotta cheese
• One cup of parmesan cheese
• Two cups of mozzarella cheese
• 32 ounces of tomato sauce

Steps for Making Meatless Baked Ziti

• Heat your oven to around 350(degrees)F ahead of the baking
• Cook the ziti pasta. You may comply with the cooking directions that came with the (ziti) pasta package. But if you want the pasta to come out a bit firmer, you may reduce the recommended cooking time (as seen in the package directions) by 2 or 3 minutes. Ensure you drain the pasta after cooking
• Then, bring the following ingredients (eggs, Italian seasoning, parsley, garlic, parmesan cheese, mozzarella cheese and ricotta cheese) together, mix them in a bowl and keep the bowl aside. Note that out of the three kinds of cheese, only ricotta will be completely mixed with the other ingredients in the bowl. The mozzarella and the parmesan cheeses need to be halved so that their remaining halves can be used for topping afterwards
• Set down a 9×13 baking dish and then scoop aside half of the tomato sauce (Remember we asked you to keep a generous amount of this sauce)
• Pour the scooped half (of tomato sauce) into the baking dish, making sure the sauce fills the entire surface of the dish
• Now, you’ll have to pour the ziti pasta (cooked and drained earlier) into the bowl you kept aside. This is the bowl in which you mixed cheeses and some other ingredients (eggs, Italian seasoning, parsley and garlic) earlier
• Ensure you blend the drained pasta with the contents of the bowl till you achieve an even pasta mixture
• Layer the pasta mixture (already made up of cooked pasta well blended with cheeses, eggs, garlic, parsley and Italian seasoning) all over the tomato sauce in the 9×13 baking dish
• Bring the remaining (mozzarella and parmesan) cheese halves as well as the other half of the tomato sauce and layer on the pasta mixture in the baking dish
• Cover the baking dish with aluminium foil and place it in your preheated oven to start baking. To prevent the covered pasta mixture from sticking to the foil while baking, ensure you sprinkle the foil with some cooking spray
• Allow the mixture to bake for up to 30 minutes. Then take the foil off the dish and allow the mixture to cook for 10 more minutes. Meanwhile, you can stop baking once the sauce starts to bubble up with the cheese melting, and slowly browning
• Remove the baked dish from the oven and let it cool before serving out. Once the baked ziti has cooled for 10 minutes or thereabouts, you can prepare to serve it

Storing and Freezing Meatless Baked Ziti

It’s more than likely that storing and freezing ziti is necessary when there are leftovers of the meatless baked ziti. While preparing the leftover ziti for storage, you can choose to break it into lumps or leave the entire ziti in the baking dish. If you prefer the latter option, ensure you place aluminium foil on the baking dish before storing the baking dish in a freezer.

Do well to also keep the baking dish airtight by sealing it on every side after placing the aluminium foil on it. This is frankly a great way of preserving the leftover ziti in the baking dish.

If you instead prefer to chop the leftover ziti into lumps, probably because the space left in your freezer cannot accommodate the baking dish, ensure the ziti lumps are kept in a well-sealed container before storing in the freezer.

Reheating Baked Ziti

Reheating is a necessary step in prolonging the storage life of (leftover) baked ziti. One great tip to succeed with this step is to keep the baked ziti in a well-covered baking dish while reheating. If you do this, steam will be kept within the baking dish, thereby preventing the ziti from excessive drying. To properly reheat baked ziti, you may consider leaving it for up to 25 minutes in a preheated oven at a temperature of 350(degrees) F.

Conclusion

Homemade baked (meatless) ziti can make up the galvanizing meal to help you start the day. You may as well crave this meatless baked dish for dinner, thanks to its eye-catching texture and mouth-watering aroma.