[00:02] baked ziti is the crispy edges. Usually, you bake a lasagna or a ziti in something like this, a baking dish. But look at this thing. Only four corners. Get the out of here with that. So, how do you serve baked ziti a smarter way? A
[00:15] way that turns the entire pasta into one crispy edge is you swap the baking dish for a sizzle platter. This is the new way to make baked ziti. This is sizzling >> So, what? No ziti now. Hey. >> Hey.
[00:30] >> For me, ziti is a baked pasta that has riot in it. Beyond that, you could do kind of whatever you want. So, I've got some whole milk riot. Going to add that whole thing to a blender. We're just going to whip it.
[00:43] Riot could be a bit grainy. So, by just pureeing it and whipping it, we just going to use throughout this dish. So, we've got this. We're going to use it a few times. And now, we need to puree our tomatoes. We got our food mill bowl. And
[00:58] I'm going with some beautiful Italian tomatoes today. Really nice kind of earthy, mineraly, acidic, slightly sweet. I'm just going to squeeze some of the plum tomatoes just to help the food mill do its job. And then we're just
[01:13] going to work it through. All the seeds and the skin are going to be held up while all the juice and the flesh gets pushed through the machine. Essentially making a tomato pata. You could also use a bottle of that.
[01:28] where all the body of the sauce is really. And we're just going to push really. And we're just going to push through any of the last remaining bits. If you don't have one of these, I highly recommend it. So, now we have a nice
[01:43] it, though. It's really loose. So, we're going to cook that down later. Reduce it going to need that for the meatballs. Here we got a pound of meat. Third lb Here we got a pound of meat. Third lb veb beef. third lb pork. To that, I'm
[01:57] going to add an egg. Now, the first step to my meatballs, it's more of a processed thing. It's the egg and the meat marry with each other. I'm going to break all that meat up and try and get every ounce of it coated in the egg. To
[02:11] consistency. And this method of meatballs, the way that I do it, is basically designed around maximal and even distribution of flavors and texture. So now that I can see all that egg is soaked up by the meat, we can
[02:26] make that little slurry. I like to call it really just like a panad. You ever seen dried bread soaked in milk in Italy to make meatballs? That's what this is. in with some of my tomato sauce. Maybe a tablespoon or two. Healthy pinch of
[02:40] salt. Tablespoon or two of our riot. Got pecarino Romano cheese here grated. Pecarino, not parmyo. Key meatballs. So I'm going to add about 1/2 cup. Equal amount of breadrumbs. Clove of garlic
[02:53] grated on a microplane. Again, even distribution of that flavor. No harsh garlic bits. And one big one should be enough. Two maxs. But don't go overboard with garlic and some chopped fresh parsley.
[03:08] Then all those flavors that you might normally just throw into the meat, we're hands. The other benefit is then you can now taste this without any egg in it. than you can eat alone because all that salt and all that flavor is now going to
[03:22] be used to flavor our meat. So now we're going to take that and incorporate it into the meat and egg and we should end up with perfect little meatballs. I want to make sure all that flavor is all over.
[03:38] The fastest way that I found to do that is to just kind of make like a log. And I'm just going to start to like pick little balls and throw them on there. Doesn't need to be even. It just needs to be more on the smaller side. We're
[03:51] basically just going to free up some portions and then go through and re-roll don't know about you, but much as I love regular meatballs, mini meatballs, they kind of rain supreme in my book. The first time I made these, I made them
[04:06] That's far too slow. Then I'll just go through and roll and then arrange them. Again, they don't have to be perfect. These smaller balls are way more rustic. I'm making today. Now, if you watched my advanced pasta and meatballs video that
[04:23] I posted last year, you'll know the most important thing now is to let these marinate at least 30 minutes. Literally, the longer the better. If you let this the longer the better. If you let this go for 4 hours overnight, these get
[04:35] better. While those marinate, we can now get our weekday sauce started. Now, I'm barely coat the bottom of the pan with some extra virgin olive oil. Then, I'm going to toss in the basil stem and the garlic. And I'm going to allow that to
[04:48] slowly come up to temp and allow the garlic and basil flavor to infuse into the olive oil. That flavored olive oil in turn will flavor the tomatoes. Season we're really looking to get some really light browning caramelization going on
[05:05] the garlic. Give them a flip. After a few minutes, we can remove the basil. And whenever you're adding tomatoes, you can't be scared when you add it. Add it all swiftly at once. And that should simmer the temperature of the pan.
[05:19] Season those tomatoes with some salt and bring it up to a simmer. And we're going to push this off to the side and let this reduce while we cook our meatballs. For those, I'm going to use a large non-stick pan just to make my life a
[05:32] little bit easier. Again, we're going to add a healthy amount of olive oil cuz I want to shallow fry the meatballs and allow that to come up to temperature. Once it's hot, we can go ahead and test the oil with one meatball. And once
[05:44] we're confident it's hot enough, we can get them all into the pan. You want to see the oil sizzling once they're added. Once they're in the pan, we're going to even them out into one layer and then not move them for about two minutes and
[05:57] allow them to develop really dark caramelized color on that first side. Once you see that color develop, you can give them a toss. If some of them need a flip them over. And then we're just trying to brown the other side. Once all
[06:13] those little mini meatballs are browned, they can get added to the sauce. And you pour it into a strainer over a bowl to separate the two, or you can carefully use a slotted spoon and start to just drain them and transfer them into the
[06:28] tomato sauce. We're just going to get those stirred around and allow those to simmer and cook through, which should only take a couple minutes and for that sauce to thicken and reduce to the right consistency. Now, we got our cheeses.
[06:41] I've got a whole milk, low moisture, and a dried out cured fresh mats. First up, I'm just going to slice up the fresh muts. muts. And then we're just going to dice it up.
[06:58] low moisture, just going to use the slicer and a box grater. And you get slicer and a box grater. And you get little pieces like that.
[07:11] nicely reduced. See the difference in consistency? sort of coats the consistency? sort of coats the meatballs. Let's taste it. like a California tomato, which are super sweet, you get a nice pleasant
[07:25] balanced acidity and sweetness to the Italian tomatoes. My ideal is a blend, but sometimes you don't need to make three cans worth of sauce. I got my oven preheating at 500°. We're going to start it off really hot, cook it for a few
[07:38] and then we're going to hit it with the this for four people, how are you going to cook it on a sizzle platter? Well, you can cook two of them or you could cook them on a sheet tray. Both of those
[07:50] together, since I'm making a smaller batch, I'm just going to transfer the going to finish my portion in this. Extract it only as much as I need from together. To our pot of boiling water, I'm going to add some salt and then I'm
[08:05] going to drop the rietoni in. And the rietoni take about 12 minutes to cook al dente. So, I'm going to pull this out around 9 to 10 minutes. Beside that pot, I'm bringing back the sauier and I'm going to just now add enough sauce as
[08:19] needed for the portion of pasta that I'm cooking. And I can save the rest. I leave it in, you can remove it. It's up to you. Then, we're just going to wait for that pasta to cook. Again, we're going to be marrying it in the sauce for
[08:32] want it to be a little bit under. Once the pasta is cooked for about 10 minutes, we're going to drain it and add it to the sauce. Using a little bit of pasta water if needed, and only if needed.
[08:46] Now, we're going to cook this in the sauce for another minute or two. I really want the sauce and the pasta to marry with each other so that when I go and bake them, it's not just pasta sitting on top of a runny sauce. Then we
[08:58] can turn the heat off. Allow the pasta to cool down. And then I'm going to go ahead and add in about a/2 cup or so of the whipped riot. Then I'm going to stir that in. That's going to cool down the pasta. It's going to emulsify and it's
[09:12] going to add a creaminess and a lightness to the sauce. Then we can finish with a handful of grated parmyo reano.
[09:24] pieces of the cubed mozzarella and a few pieces of the sliced low moisture mozzarella directly to the pasta and get it tossed. Now this pasta is ready to be it tossed. Now this pasta is ready to be placed on the sizzle platter and baked.
[09:39] start to dot it. Make sure some of that cheese touches the sizzle platter, crisps up. interchanging the different mozzarellas. You get different consistencies, different flavors, and we're also sort of ensuring we've got
[09:52] some blank areas for the pasta to get crisp. Hit it with a little olive oil, some parm. Before it goes in, we're going to add the rest of the ricott to a piping bag. I'm going to cut it down the middle. I'm
[10:07] going to take those ends, tie it together. Going to prep another bag with a tip, and I'm going to push that tip out. Then we're going to cut the riot pop it into the bag. And then we're just going to pipe little bits of riot, which
[10:21] we're going to allow to bake. But then we're going to finish some fresh, just so you've got both of those textures again. Then we're just going to pop that again. Then we're just going to pop that into the oven at 500° and allow it to
[10:33] cook for about 3 to 5 minutes. While that cooks, we have some breadrumbs of oil, olive oil. I'm just going to mix that together and hydrate that. those breadcrumbs. We're going to add these on in the final minute or two to get them
[10:46] nice and crisp. And then for garnish, I like to take the top pieces that come in like a little bundle. And then I got this nice little flour almost of basil. Now, once all that cheese is beautiful and melty, then we're going to switch it
[11:00] onto the broiler. Start to get some browning and some caramelization happening. And once we're about a minute away, then we're just going to hit it with the breadcrumbs. Give it another minute or so. Let those
[11:13] breadcrumbs crisp up. Once everything's bubbly, brown, and crisp, we can get it out of the oven. Now, I built it high so I get this gradient of darkness. I like some borderline burnt, others crisp, but as
[11:27] you could see, there's still some life left to some of the pasta that's charred. If you built this flatter, you get a more even browning, so you can going to take one of these plates, put a little towel down on top of it. sort of
[11:41] then we're going to work on our color and just pop these in a few spots. Some fresh rig flavor throughout. Maybe pipe them in one of the rietoni. Finish with
[11:53] them in one of the rietoni. Finish with some more fresh parm. some steamed pasta, some crispy cheese, meatball. The reality is when you cook
[12:06] baked ziti or baked rietoni in a baking dish, you're getting crisp on the outside, a little crisp on the side, and then steamed pasta underneath. This kind of reverses the script. Most of it is crisp and beautiful with a layer of
[12:21] crisp and beautiful with a layer of perfectly cooked pasta underneath. I mean, that's kind of what you want to see happen. That's the ziti test. It's mouth is Spider-Man. As far as I'm concerned, if your baked rietoni or if
[12:33] your baked ziti doesn't have mini meatballs in it, what are we what are we going to be linked down in the description. I urge you to also check out our Patreon. We got some fun lessons over there doing some in-depth chicken
[12:45] cutlets, some in-depth vonglay recipes, and we got two new lessons every month. Head on down to the description, check it all out. That's all that I have then, take care of yourself and go feed yourself.