Baked Ziti With Hot Italian Sausage & Fresh Mozzarella

Emily Elizabeth's Note:

This is a modified version of a recipe given to me by Momma Maglione. Her recipe does not include the sausage and uses her secret family gravy recipe which I cannot post. ;)

• Total Time: 1 hrs 15 mins
• Prep Time: 30 mins
• Cook Time: 45 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 8

• 16 ounces ziti pasta
• 4 hot Italian sausage links (about 1 lb)
• 1/2 cup white wine (I typically use pinot grigio, but any white or even red will work well)
• 1 (32 ounce) can san marzano tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups fresh mozzarella cheese (in water, I get mine at Costco)
• serve with the rest of your bottle wine, and some nice italian music

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook ziti until it is al dente (so that when you bake it in the oven it will cook the rest of the way). Rinse in cold water, drain and pour into a 7"x11" glass baking dish.
3. Meanwhile, begin cooking sausage.
4. Puree San Marzano tomatoes, crushed red pepper flakes and salt in a blender until smooth.
5. When sausage is done, remove from pan and add 1/2 cup wine to reserved drippings from sausage and bring to a simmer scraping any bits from the bottom of the pan and stirring with wine. While wine is simmering, slice sausage at a slight diagonal about 1/2" thick.
6. Add pureed sauce and sliced sausage to wine and stir. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
7. Meanwhile thinly slice and chop the fresh mozarella balls (some people recommend freezing for a 5 minutes or so to help with slicing, but I never do).
8. When sauce is done simmering, pour everything over pasta. Sprinkle 1 cup of the fresh mozzarella throughout (fresh makes all the difference!) and sprinkle the rest on top. Top with a few shakes of crushed red pepper.
9. Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until you see it getting a little bubbly. You can even cook it longer it you want it to get a little crisp on top, not too crisp as it will get dry.
10. Serve with a bottle of wine and some nice Italian music.

Reviews

[LonghornMama]

Very tasty! I made a few changes to suit the ingredients I had. Used mild Italian sausage, 6 of them, which I saut?ed, then sliced, then saut?ed some more. Added crushed red pepper, seasoning, and a little fennel to compensate for the mild sausage. Used a 28 oz can of Whole Foods organic crushed tomatoes, then made up the difference in tomatoes with about a cup of homemade pasta sauce. Used 2 7-oz containers of fresh mozzarella medallions (no cutting!), and could have used 3. Used a 13x9 baking dish. Served with homemade French bread and steamed broccoli for a delicious meal with lots of leftovers. Thanks for sharing the recipe!

[Chef TanyaW]

Great recipe, and one I'll try again. This is a good one to double if you need to bring someone dinner... it was reasonably fast and dirtied a lot of dishes, but there's not a lot of hands on time.

I made a few small changes that probably made my dish inferior to the original recipe... but it was still great. I used Costco shredded mozarella cheese. I also used canned whole tomatoes (not san marzano). I used penne pasta instead of ziti, since that was what I had on hand. I used mild italian sausage instead of hot to make it more kid friendly, and they all ate it. I was afraid the sauce wouldn't be flavorful enough, so I added 1/2 T italian seasoning. It was great, so I'll do that again.

Thanks for a great recipe to go to in a pinch that doesn't require a lot of ingredients.

I agree with another reviewer that it needs a little more sauce (I'd say about 50% more, my husband says 25% more).

I only baked it for about 20 minutes because I was in a hurry, and I bumped the heat up to 375 so the cheese would brown in the shorter cooking time.

[RedVinoGirl]

Excellent! I increased the wine and kept the tomato amount as stated. We're not a "saucy" family, so it was perfect. If you are a sauce family, you would want to increase the tomatoes and wine. This was spicy....which I loved but my kids weren't as fond of it. Will definitely make again.