Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Baked Spaghetti

Had a baked spaghetti for dinner tonight. It's just a good, warm, yummy, comforting food. Almost everybody loves spaghetti, but with a little extra effort - and I meant little! - you can take good old spaghetti and make it great! I use my homemade spaghetti sauce for this. You could use jarred sauce & it would probably be great - but I'm absolutely in love with my sauce! Give it a go - definitely worth it!

The ingredients don't get simpler than this:


Spaghetti noodles, sauce & cheese! I usually go with Cheddar/Jack.

Get your noodles boiling - half a bag...

(Action shots are hard when you're doing the cooking AND taking the pictures!! LOL)

While this is going preheat your oven to 350. And you should probably heat your sauce up a little - it'll spread smoother/easier... not that we're going for perfection here. Once the noodles are done drain them & set aside.

Now put just a little sauce in the bottom of an 8x8 dish. You don't need much - you're really just using this to 'grease the pan' so the noodles don't stick.


Now add in half the spaghetti noodles & spread them as evenly as you can. Then put half the sauce on top of that. And then half of the cheese!


Don't skimp on the cheese!

Now repeat those layers - use the rest of the noodles & the rest of the sauce but DON'T put the top layer of cheese on yet. If you do it'll brown & turn a little crispy - which is delicious - just not what we're going for here.


Not super heavy on the sauce - I only used 2 cups for the whole thing - maybe would like a little more for this because I LOVE red sauce, but when I make my jumbo batch of sauce I break it into 2-cup bags, so that's what I had.

Bake it in the oven for about 25 minutes. Pull it out & top it with the rest of your cheese. Pop it back into the oven for about 5 minutes to melt the cheese into an ooey-gooey goodness.


Ahhh...... the noodles just soak up all that sauce & get a nice layer of cheese - perfection.

DO YOU SMELL THAT!!!???

Serve it up and enjoy!!


Baked Spaghetti:

1/2 a bag/box of spaghetti
2 cups of spaghetti sauce (a jar is about 3 cups, so if you go that route don't use the whole thing!!)
2 cups shredded cheese (I use Cheddar/Jack)

Preheat oven to 350. Boil spaghetti noodles according to package directions.

Spread a small amount of sauce in the bottom of an 8x8 pan. Add half the cooked noodles. Spread half the remaining sauce over the noodles. Cover with half the cheese. Top with remaining noodles, then sauce.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove, top with remaining cheese, return to oven for 5 minutes.

Let sit for a few minutes before diving in to let it set up. ENJOY!!

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