The original recipe can be found on the Taste of Home website--it was one of those "how I got my kid to eat....." recipes (spinach was the secret ingredient). The original calls for 2 cups of cheddar cheese and 1-1/2 cups of mozzarella. Use lots of fresh baby spinach (steamed lightly) instead of frozen. Use fusilla (spiral) pasta. Olive oil is not necessary. This is a great make-ahead recipe, and freezes well.
Delicious! It made exactly two 6"x8" dishes. I baked one of them for 25 minutes at 350 and it was perfect. Really, really good. The one thing is that I think the quantity of spaghetti sauce at 16 ounces is a mistake. I looked and looked at the grocery store but I didn't find any 16 oz jars, only 26 oz jars... that and the complaints from other users that this dish was dry leads me to believe the author meant 26 oz not 16. So I used a whole 26 oz jar of spaghetti sauce and it was perfect, not too saucey and not dry at all. Just right. I froze the other 6x8" dish and will reheat it for dinner in a few weeks. My husband, who is not a very big pasta fan, thought it was delicious.
This recipe was delicious. I made it for my husband and daughter who dislike spinach and they ate it up. My in-laws came out the next day and the leftovers were gobbled up in seconds. Next time I think I will use ricotta cheese instead of mozzerella as it will add better flavor and add more moisture to the noodles during re-heating. The only bad thing about this recipe is that is really dirties a lot of dishes. Next time I will simply defrost the spinach instead of cooking it and I will go ahead and mix it together with the eggs cheese and oil right in the baking dish. Very good stuff this will become a weekly meal in our house and the leftovers make good lunches.
This is very good. It is almost the exact same as a recipe my mother made as a child. I only give this four stars because I don't think it's QUITE as good as my childhood favorite. I will post her recipe here as well.
This was perfect for me to clean out my freezer and use on hand ingredients to keep my budget down this week. I cut the pasta down to a cup and a half, I used ground turkey, and I increased the onion to a whole onion and the garlic to four or so cloves. I did spice up the sauce with more spice (italian seasoning, onion/garlic powder, fresh ground pepper and a glug of red wine). I did add a little fresh grated parmesan to the spinach/pasta layer. I spread a little extra shredded mozzerella over the top along with fresh grated parmesan. This was very easy and really makes quite a bit. I appreciate that as this is going to be lunch for my husband for a couple days, too. We all enjoyed this quite a bit and I loved that it's easily bendable to use healthier/organic ingredients and whatever you have on hand to pull it together and make it your own.
is there any way i could rate it for more than 5 stars? i'm 15 i made this recipe and my family loved it. It's definately a KEEPER!
This recipe is 5 's with a little tweaking. I used: # 16 ounces Whole Wheat pasta # 1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach # 1/2 cup bread crumbs # 2 eggs beaten # 1/2 cup ricotta cheese # 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese # 1 pound lean ground beef # 1 chopped vidalia onion # 4-5 cloves garlic minced # 1 (26 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce I followed the instructions and then sprinkled a little more mozzarella cheese on top before cooking covered in the oven. It was very good...and I am quite picky and hate spinach. I will def. make this again (and again and again):D
Other reviewers were right. This pasta dish would have been WAY too dry had I not used a 26oz jar of spaghetti sauce instead of the 16oz. Even with that change it still could have used a little more sauce to get some moisture down into the pasta layer. Or maybe it needs to be 4 alternate layers to distribute a little more evenly. I used a combination of mozzarella & cheddar but otherwise stuck to the recipe. Definite changes next time to get a better dish. It has potential! Thanks for the decent start. Will give it another try.
Surprisingly delicious! I did not cook the spinach separately- I simply put the defrosted spinach straight out of the package in the bottom of my colander and then dumped the cooked pasta over the top. I did mix in about a cup of cottage cheese inwith the pasta-spinach mixture and seasoned with some garlic powder and Italian herbs. I put fresh basil in my sauce towrds the end as well as a pinch of red pepper flakes. My son gobbled this down saying it was almost as good as homemade lasagna and not nearly the work. Thanks for sharing Amy!!
I thought this sounded like a really great recipe-then I made it for dinner. I ended up not serving it because it tasted so bad.
