This Easy Baked Ziti is an Italian favorite, filled with homemade red sauce, ground beef, three cheeses and fresh basil. It’s such a yummy, cozy, perfect dish to serve for a holiday or a regular weeknight at home.
Jump to:
Easy Baked Ziti Casserole Recipe
Our Easy Baked Ziti is homey, delicious and a simple recipe to feed to any sized group, from your family to a large crowd. It’s easy to make ahead of time, so it’s also a great meal-train recipe to have in your back pocket when you want something to send to a friend or family member who is sick or just had a baby.
Best of all, both kids and adults will love this dish. When it comes to baked pasta with red sauce and cheese, what’s not to like? Add our Garlic Herb Twist Bread or Pull-Apart Garlic Bread and you will officially be a hero for the day!
What To Serve With Easy Baked Ziti
All sorts of soups, salads and breads would make excellent sides for baked ziti. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Creamy Cauliflower Soup
- Skinny Vegetable Soup
- Cucumber Tomato Avocado Salad
- Garlic Herb Twist Bread
- Copycat Olive Garden Breadsticks
- Easy Bruschetta with Fresh Tomato and Basil
Ingredients and Substitutions For Easy Baked Ziti Recipe
- Ziti Pasta - you want to be sure and only cook your pasta to al dente since it will be baked again. This prevents the pasta from getting mushy. You could even use gluten-free pasta, chickpea pasta or lentil pasta if you want to make this a little more “healthy.”
- Olive Oil - you can substitute any other cooking oil.
- Onion - you can use either yellow or white onions for this recipe.
- Garlic - fresh minced tastes best.
- Ground Beef - you can also substitute Italian sausage if you would like, or eliminate completely to make the recipe vegetarian.
- Spaghetti Sauce - use your favorite kind of spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, marinara sauce or pasta sauce.
- Salt and Pepper - season to taste. You can also add a touch of Italian seasoning if you’d like.
- Mozzarella Cheese - you can purchase pre-shredded, or shred yourself.
- Provolone Cheese - we use slices, but you can also purchase a block and shred your own. In that case, you would want 1 ½ cups of shredded provolone.
- Sour Cream - any kind will work great, or you can substitute ricotta cheese.
- Parmesan Cheese - freshly grated will taste best.
- Basil - fresh basil works the best. It adds a nice freshness to the dish that dried basil just won’t be able to replace.
How to Make Easy Baked Ziti
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cook ziti pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until "al dente," then set aside (Note: see package for exact cooking instructions).
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat, then add the onion and garlic and cook for about 3 minutes, or until the onion begins to soften.
- Add the hamburger meat to the skillet, browning over medium heat for about 5-8 minutes. Once the meat is almost completely cooked, add spaghetti sauce and simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- In a lightly greased 9" x 13" casserole dish, add about half of the cooked pasta. Top with half of the mozzarella cheese and the provolone slices. Spread the sour cream evenly on top of the cheeses.
- Pour half of the meat sauce over the sour cream, then add the remaining pasta, the remaining sauce and the remaining mozzarella cheese. Finish by sprinkling the Parmesan cheese and fresh basil evenly over the top.
- Bake in a preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until the spaghetti sauce is bubbly and the cheese is golden brown. Remove the baking dish from the oven and let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
Can I Make Baked Ziti Ahead of Time?
You can prep this entire recipe, then wrap and refrigerate before baking. It will store just fine for up to 3 days in the fridge. Once you are ready to bake, simply remove from the fridge and let come to room temperature before baking as directed. Tada!
You can also prep components of this recipe ahead of time, if you would rather do it that way. You can pre-cook the pasta, then cool completely and store in the fridge for up to 3 days. Or, you can pre-make the entire red sauce with onions, garlic and ground beef, then cool and store in the fridge. It’s really up to you and what you think will help you out the most!
What Can I Add to Easy Baked Ziti?
This is a simple recipe to make adjustments to, in order to fit your own preferences and tastes, or even just to mix things up.
- Roasted veggies - broccoli, tomatoes, eggplant or any kind of squash will taste great.
- Italian sausage - make sure it is cooked ahead of time, then dice and mix into your sauce.
- Ricotta cheese - this can be a great substitution for the sour cream in the recipe, or even mix half sour cream and half ricotta.
- Italian Seasoning - you can season your sauce with this, in addition to salt and pepper, if you’d like.
Easy Baked Ziti Recipe
Ingredients
- 16 oz Ziti Pasta cooked al dente
- 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
- 1 medium Onion yellow or white; diced
- 1 Tablespoons Garlic minced
- 1 lb Ground Beef or Italian sausage
- 2 28-oz cans Spaghetti Sauce
- to taste Salt
- to taste Black Pepper
- 1 ½ Cups Mozzarella Cheese shredded
- 6-8 slices Provolone Cheese
- 1 ½ cups Sour Cream
- ½ Cup Parmesan Cheese grated
- ¼ Cup Fresh Basil chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cook ziti pasta to "al dente," according to package, then set aside.
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat, then add the onion and garlic and cook for about 3 minutes, or until the onion begins to soften.
- Add the ground beef to the skillet, browning over medium heat for about 5-8 minutes. Once the meat is almost completely cooked, add spaghetti sauce and simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- In a lightly greased 9" x 13" baking dish, add about half of the cooked pasta. Top with half of the mozzarella cheese and the provolone slices. Spread the sour cream evenly on top of the cheeses.
- Pour half of the meat and spaghetti sauce over the sour cream, then add the remaining pasta, the remaining sauce and the remaining mozzarella cheese. Finish by sprinkling the Parmesan cheese and fresh basil evenly over the top.
- Bake in a preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until the spaghetti sauce is bubbly and the cheese is golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
Nutrition
Here are some other Italian pasta recipes that we love!
- Slow Cooker Tortellini Pasta Bake
- Baked Penne Pasta with Italian Meatballs
- Crockpot Italian Meatballs
- Chicken Pesto Pasta
- Garlic Parmesan Orzo
If you’ve tried this recipe, please rate it and leave a comment on this post. I love hearing feedback from you helps me and other readers too! If you love Pinterest, feel free to leave a comment and photo there too. Also, if you like to share, use the hashtag #thecarefreekitchen on Instagram and tag me @thecarefreekitchen so I can find you and give your post some love. You can also find me on Facebook at The Carefree Kitchen. Thank you!!
This Easy Baked Ziti is such a homey, delicious and simple recipe that family members of all ages will love. It's filled with homemade red sauce, ground beef, three cheeses and fresh basil and is a perfect dish to serve for a holiday or a regular weeknight at home.
Leave a Reply