Baked ziti is a popular casserole with

ziti Ziti is an extruded pasta, originating in Campania. It is shaped into a long, wide tube, about 25 cm long, that needs to be broken by hand into smaller pieces before cooking. Ziti have similarities to bucatini but are much thicker. Ziti are ...

pasta Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, ar ...

and a Neapolitan-style tomato-based sauce characteristic of

Italian-American cuisine Italian-American cuisine is a style of Italian cuisine adapted throughout the United States. Italian-American food has been shaped throughout history by various waves of immigrants and their descendants, called Italian Americans. As immigrants ...

. It is a form of '' pasta al forno''. Typically, the pasta is first boiled separately until it is nearly, but not completely, done. The almost-cooked pasta is added to a tomato-based sauce. The tomato-coated pasta is then combined with cheese, typically a mixture of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan. Other ingredients can be added with the cheese, such as

ground meat Ground meat, called mince or minced meat outside North America, is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife. A common type of ground meat is ground beef, but many other types of meats are prepared in a similar fashion, incl ...

sausage A sausage is a type of meat product usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs may be included as fillers or extenders. ...

mushroom A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. ''Toadstool'' generally denotes one poisonous to humans. The standard for the name "mushroom" is ...

peppers Pepper or peppers may refer to: Food and spice * Piperaceae or the pepper family, a large family of flowering plant ** Black pepper * ''Capsicum'' or pepper, a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family Solanaceae ** Bell pepper ** Chili ...

, and

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onio ...

s. The combined ingredients are placed in a baking dish, covered with mozzarella cheese, baked in the oven and served hot. If unavailable, ziti can be substituted with other tubular pastas such as

penne Penne () is an Extrusion, extruded type of pasta with cylinder (geometry), cylinder-shaped pieces, their ends cut at an angle. ''Penne'' is the plural form of the Italian ''penna'' (meaning ''feather'' but ''pen'' as well), deriving from Latin ' ...

or rigatoni.

References

Casserole dishes Italian-American cuisine Pasta dishes {{Italy-cuisine-stub

See also

References