Nothing says comfort food like baked spaghetti. This baked spaghetti recipe is easy, frugal and so delicious that your family is sure to love it!
Anytime we have leftover spaghetti, my family begs me to make this easy and delicious baked spaghetti. It is so simple to mix together that you could have dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less.
To make this baked spaghetti recipe using leftovers, you simple need to mix the noodles and sauce together in a bowl, dump it in a pan, top with cheese and bake. Depending on how many noodles or how much sauce I have leftover, I might dump in another jar of sauce to make the meal stretch a little.
For this particular post, I made baked spaghetti from scratch… and I made 2! One was gluten free and the other was made with regular spaghetti noodles.
First Things First
The first step in making this baked spaghetti is to cook your noodles.
I also defrosted the meat I was going to use. Ground beef and Italian sausage were my choices, but you could get away with using any of the following: ground beef, ground turkey, ground chicken, or italian sausage. You could even make this a meatless meal and skip the meat all together.
Get Saucy!
Usually I would use a regular jar of store bought spaghetti sauce. But for the last 3 months I’ve been working on a pantry challenge; cleaning out my freezers and emptying my shelves.
I had several gallon sized freezer bags full of blended tomatoes from our garden a few years ago. One of my main goals during this challenge was to eat through all of those tomatoes.
I pulled one bag out the night before I was making this meal so it could defrost. Then when I’m ready, I simply dump the tomatoes in with the meat and add some spices, a little sugar and a little water (if needed). It turned out delicious and no one was complaining about missing the store bought sauce.
Pull It Together
After the sauce and the noodles were ready, I mixed them together in a large bowl and poured them into an oil sprayed 9×13 pan. Normally I cook 2 or 3 pounds of spaghetti noodles to feed my large family of 10. Tonight I had only 1 pound of noodles and when I was cooking it I kept thinking it probably wouldn’t be enough. But after I added in the 3 pounds of meat and the sauce, it filled my pan up nicely.
I topped most of this baked spaghetti with mozzarella cheese. I have a couple of kids who don’t care for cheese so I leave it off part of the dish. After I had the cheese on top, I put it in the oven for about 40 minutes at 375 degrees. Now, my oven has issues. When I try to follow other recipes, I usually have to up the temp by about 25 degrees and bake things for about 20 extra minutes. So, when you make this, be cautious about the temp and time that you bake it for. It would be so sad to burn something so delicious.
Put it on the Table
Bacon green beans and garlic cheddar biscuits were my choice of sides for this baked spaghetti. You could get by with a simple green salad and dressing and some store bought french bread with butter. If you really want to be fancy, try my simple sourdough bread. Anyway you serve it, it’s guaranteed to be a hit. Let me know in the comments below if your family loved this as much as mine do!
Best Comfort Food Baked Spaghetti
Ingredients
- 1 lb spaghetti noodles
- 1-3 lbs ground meat ground beef, chicken, turkey or italian sausage all work great
- 1 large onion chopped
- 48 oz. jar favorite spaghetti sauce
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- 1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- 2. Fill pot with water. Bring to a boil.
- 3. Once water has come to a boil, add noodles and cook for 6-8 minutes or until done.
- 4. While noodles are cooking, brown the ground meat and onion. Chop the onion and add it to a pan with the meat. Cook until browned and onions are translucent.
- 5. When noodles are done, drain them over the sink in a strainer.
- 6. When meat is brown, add *spaghetti sauce and cook until simmering.
- 7. Mix the noodles and sauce together in pot.
- 8. Spray a 9×13 pan with oil.
- 9. Dump noodle and sauce mixture into 9×13 pan.
- 10. Top noodles and sauce with shredded cheese.
- 11. Bake casserole in oven for 40-45 minutes or until bubbly and cheese on top is browned.
Leave a Reply