I love to cook, but I can’t take credit for cooking this or for the recipe. It was fantastic: sausage, ricotta, and spinach-stuffed shells.
Kristi was the chef, and this Pinterest recipe was the inspiration.
To be honest, I need to spend more time on Pinterest. As a content marketing tool, it’s highly, highly underrated. Like everything else social these days, it’s a platform that truly doubles as a search engine. And I’m going to send Rachel @ Craving Some Creativity some inbound traffic.
Kristi tells me this recipe was pretty easy. She used:
– 16 oz. jumbo pasta shells (just know you’ll have extra)
– 4 cups of ricotta cheese
– 12 oz. mozzarella cheese (Kristi doesn’t bother with silly measurements)
– 2 eggs, lightly beaten
– 4 tsp. dried oregano
– 3/4 cup Parmesan shredded cheese
– 45 oz. spaghetti sauce from a jar (my favorite is plain ol’ Ragu meat sauce)
– 1 lb. ground Italian sausage
– dried parsley
– pepper to taste
You brown the sausage, and then take it out, browning the spinach in the sausage pan until the spinach wilts.
Cook the shells until they start to get soft, about half the time that the box recommends.
In a side bowl, you put ricotta, 8 oz. of mozzarella, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, eggs, oregano, garlic powder, pepper. Stir in the spinach.
Kristi then coated the bottom of a 9×13 and an 8×8 glass pan with spaghetti sauce from the jar. Spoon the cheese mix into the shells, and place them open-side-up in the glass pan. You may have extra shells, like I said before.
Sprinkle your sausage over the top of it.
Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan and mozzarella cheese on top.
Cover it with aluminum foil, and bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly. You CAN take the foil off and broil it for an extra three minutes to get cheese crusty. Kristi did not opt for broiling.
Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
Add a salad and a cold beer, and time for din din.
Fantastic recipe from Rachel, and perfect execution from Kristi. Like I’d say otherwise, lol. However, I didn’t eat this dish; I devoured it for dinner and then lunch the next couple of days. It was tremendous.
I need to get on Pinterest more often!
Ryan Welton is a lover not a fighter, an eater *and* a cooker, and he likes to write about food even if he can’t take credit for the recipe or the work put into the dish. He can take credit for the videos he posts to his YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com/ryanweltonmusic — pay me a visit!
