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I made this dish because I wanted something easy to reheat for lunch throughout the week. I don’t have a toaster oven at work, so anything I make for reheating needs to be something that microwaves well. This dish turned out to be great reheated. Sometimes I needed to add a little water to the dish to make sure the sauce didn’t get too dry, but my pasta to sauce ratio was a little off (I corrected the proportions for this post, so there should be plenty of sauce.)
Baked Rigatoni
Servings: 5 people
Ingredients
- ¾ lb Italian sausage
- 1 onion cut into large pieces
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- ½ cup red wine
- ½ tsp thyme
- ¼ tsp celery seed
- 1 tsp basil
- 1 tsp oregano
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 large can crushed tomatoes 28 oz. can
- 1 can petite diced tomatoes 14 oz. can
- 30 oz ricotta cheese (you might have some left over)
- Shredded or fresh mozzarella (or both)
- 1 lb mini rigatoni dry, uncooked
Instructions
- Cook Italian sausage, breaking into small pieces. Set aside.
- Add wine, onion, and garlic to blender or food processor.
- Process or blend until the onions and garlic are pureed.
- Heat a medium to large saucepan over medium heat.
- Add all of the ingredients (including the Italian sausage that was set aside) except for the rigatoni.
- Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
- Cover and let simmer for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Prepare rigatoni according to package instructions.
- Spoon one layer of sauce on the bottom of one or more baking dishes. I recommend using dishes that are on the deeper side to get multiple layers. Add a single layer of pasta, followed by sauce, ricotta, and mozzarella. Repeat order of ingredients until baking dish is full.
- Bake at 350° until cheese on top is fully melted.