Easy Cheesy Baked Ziti Recipe Everyone Will Love

You've seen the thumbnail. You know what I'm making. I'm going to show you guys how to make a baked ziti. Now, come on in here and take a look at this right here. Look, these are my ingredients and I'm going to go ahead. I've already started, you know, heating up my, you know, I use a wok. You guys can use a regular, you know, pan or whatever. For me, I just put a little heat in this and I'm going to start. I'm not going to put no oil or nothing like that because look, this is that sweet, you know, that sweet sauces, right? So it's going to have enough. I can get it out. We'll just put that in there. It'll come up to and what we're going to do is we're going to start browning that. Now, if you guys pay attention right here, I went ahead and preheated my oven to 350 degrees, right? It's working right now because I got some baguettes. I'm going to make some type of, you know, bread to go with it. I know everybody uses like a garlic bread, but I'm going to do something a little different. We're going to go with baguettes. Now you guys see what I'm doing is I'm just breaking it up because I want to get maximum exposure on the bottom of the, you know, the wok, right? Again, I'm using a wok, not a pan, but you got to do it however you want to. So you see, it's starting to brown up. Now I'm going to take my press. I'm getting ready to load it up. Now I'm going to just go ahead and give it a, you know, a press. Look at that folks. Minced garlic. We'll just get this in here. Let it get some of that heat on it and start marrying its flavors along, right? Now I'm going to go ahead and use my little press here to make it just a little bit smaller. So now I like, I kind of like diced them down a certain size. I'm just making them just a little smaller. All right, so look, now we get ready to go ahead, you know, and get our pasta together, right? Check it out. Ziti noodles. Water's already hot. We just add it. Let me go ahead and reach across, grab myself a, you know, wooden spoon. And what we do is we just move this across like this. I'm going to add a pinch of salt. We're going to let these and cook these to the instructions that's on the box. We want these to be al dente. All right. So I want you guys to come in and take a look. I know I did it a little backwards this time because a lot of people see me do onions first. Then the last thing I add is my garlic, right? But I really want this to be real garlicky. You know what I mean? To have that without adding all of the different seasoning. You know what I mean? So having minced garlic works just fine, right? So now I want you guys to pay attention. Look right here. All you got to do is start adding everything now. Now that my potatoes, I mean my tomatoes was in. Now I'll come with my sauce. Listen, there is no order. I don't want to fake like it is or nothing like that. You just want to add them. You know, everything that I showed you that was left, you just want to add it, right? I'm going to go ahead and set my heat down here to a medium because we want to get this back to boiling so everything can start getting warm and start marinating itself, right? Marrying itself to each other. You add our water, our seasoning. Okay. So you see that right there? See it? That's what I'm looking for, right? Now we're going to add our bay leaves, right? I'm going to push them down like that and let them do their thing. Oh yeah. Next thing we do, we want to put a lid over the top, right? I'll put it over this way because you can see where the vent. I'm going to adjust this so that it'll stay at like a cool little simmer. We're going to let this go for 30 minutes. Okay. So everything is coming right around, you know, to the, to the witching hour, right? So listen, get myself some spray, nonstick spray, right? Go ahead and just spray this. You know, you don't want anything to stick, right? Trust me folks, make your life a whole lot easier. All right. So now that we have that spray, let me go ahead and take this off right here. Put this down. Now I'm just going to give this a, you know, a nice little stir. Loving what I'm seeing, right folks? But listen, I'm going to go ahead and take out, you know, my bay leaves, right? Don't forget we put three in there. We want to get three out. It's not the end of the world if you don't, you know what I mean? You just want it to release its flavors. Now what you want to do is you want to go ahead and just start, you know, introducing your ziti, right? Now this was one pound, so all of this got to go in there. Now you guys kind of like figuring out why I use the wok, right? I just like the fact that when you use a wok, you know, with the high sides, it makes it just a little bit more easier. If you guys use a pan, make sure you got enough room, you know, for all your meat and all of your, you know, your ziti pasta. Now we're still under a medium, you know, excuse me, like a medium low, you know, flame, right? You want to get it nice and hot because when we started introducing, you know, our cheese, you want to make sure that it melts properly. And if I hadn't said already, listen, we want to save a little bit of that pasta water. That's the secret to getting everything to be creamy, folks. So now look, this is what I do. This is fresh mozzarella, right? So I just take a little bit and just put some in here like that. Listen, it's going to be, as you can see, it's just the way it breaks up. And when you put it in there like that, it'd be like, like gummy, right? So I just go ahead and take my spoon and just do it like this. You know, it helps it when it melts. You don't want to make them too big, but we got to the heat, right? Just keep adding this like this. And then we're going to start giving it a stir, start mixing this in. Then we're going to come with a little bit of that parm. Matter of fact, I'm going to put a little bit of that parm in here with it. Now I'm going to go ahead and just sprinkle a little bit of this parm in here, just like that. Not all of it, right? And then we're just going to work this in back and forth, and we're going to let that heat do its thing. I just really want to get it underneath. You know, once we got it underneath, you see that steam coming off? Don't forget, we still got a fire underneath it. We're just going to keep moving it, you know, back and forth. Once I see it's like that, see how it kind of like disappeared? We're going to let that heat just go ahead and melt. Now we're going to go ahead and finish up the rest. Just start adding that. Remember, fresh parm. If you don't have it, you know what I mean? Using that, you know, if you can get some and just pre-shred it yourself, that'll be second best. Third would be, you know, that means you just had to like buy some already shredded. But I can tell you when you buy it already shredded, that waxy film with it, that's a lot for me. So we just add just something like this, and we'll leave it. I'm going to show you what I saved, you know, from it. I saved this much right here, right? Because we're going to do something with it, you know, at the end, I might put a little bit on top just to see how, you know, to put the topping on it. Because that's how we know Big Ziti, that's what that topping, it's nice and cheesy. You see how it is when you put those balls in there. You see what I mean? When you just break them up like that, it just helps with the melting process. But you see it right there? That's what we want folks. You see that? Now we're making Ziti. Don't forget, we saved a little bit of that pasta water. So if it gets too thick on us, what we do, we just add a little bit to it, and this is what keeps it creamy. So you can see that I just added the last little bit. I like to put it in in increments, you know what I mean? That way I can find out, you know, if I got too much or how is it working and all of that. But this is it. Problem is, you just got to make sure you keep moving it around. Not really a problem, but you just want to make sure it's all got cheese on it. You can see it's nice and cheesy in the beginning. I mean in the center, look at that right there. Right. So I'd like to bring some of that over here, bring some of them noodles and just keep moving it, you know, back and forth. So now I'm going to turn this off, right? Now you guys see I got my pepper and my salt. This is when I taste it to see if it needs a little bit of anything. I make my adjustment. I can just tell you now this was just right for my palate. You guys taste and find out what's good for you. You remember this? Remember we greased it? That was key. Why? Because I'm getting ready to take this, right? I'm going to add this in here because I'm going to need it. I'm going to take it and then what we're going to do is we're going to pour it in just like that. Tell me that don't look good folks, but I got a little pro tip for everybody right now too, especially when you're working with cheese and you put something in here like this, you know, we want to go ahead and put a top on it, right? So in this case, we're going to be using aluminum foil. Now I'm going to show you what I do to aluminum foil. Okay, so remember I talked about the pro tip. This is aluminum. For those of you guys that don't know, the shiny side goes up. This is the pretty side. The dull side goes wherever the food is, right? And seeing how we're going to put some cheese on the top of that, we're going to go ahead and spray this right now with just a little bit of this nonstick because we don't want our cheese to stick to this, right? Trust me folks, after we did all of this hard work and we open it up, we want to see it, right? So now you remember this? This is going to be nice right here, folks. We just want to put it on here. We don't need no whole lot. You know what I mean? We just want to put some on here like this and that right there should do it. You put a whole lot on top of here, it won't get a chance to sink down and you won't get what you guys are looking for. We know when it's done, right? Because we all like to take them pictures, right? So remember spray side down. Let's get it over here like this. Remember we had 350 degrees. We're going to set a timer for 30 minutes and I'll see y'all in just a sec, folks. Okay, folks. Now after all of that, tell me your brain ain't going, your mouth is not watering. If you do, something ain't right, right? So check it out. Here we go. You guys can see it nice and creamy. It's cheesy. Cheers. I ain't got nothing for you folks. Listen, those of you guys have been lucky enough to eat at the Olive Garden. I don't want to hear all that. A lot of people saying, oh, they not good or you can make it better. This right here is over the top, but this is the restaurant quality. I just gave you the recipe. You guys try it. Let me know down in the comment section below and let's go ahead and open up that conversation. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me just take the time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button and tell everybody out there, listen, there's a channel out here that's simplifying these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. And you know what folks, I'm going to go over here, sit down in this chair, kick back, watch a little TV and eat, and I'm out. Peace.