Baked Macaroni
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I am all about easy food to cook. Cook a great but easy meal for the family, for your significant other, whoever. It is a lot like making spaghetti but better because there’s cheese and it is macaroni!!!
I first tasted this dish a long long time ago at one of those crazy Filipino parties that we have where everyone all joins together at someone’s house and each family (or person lol) brings food whether they cooked it themselves or bought a crapload of it from somewhere. Basically, there is TONS AND TONS OF FOOD AND DESSERT!! One of the dishes that happened to be there was baked macaroni! Never had this before because, of course, I was used to just regular spaghetti. I fell in love with it after the first bite! The sauce was a little on the sweeter side but it went well with the cheese. The macaroni was perfect al dente, and it wasn’t too overly filling and heavy considering it is pasta.I had to figure out who made it but never actually figured out who made it so I decided to make my own and experiment on how to get that certain sweetness taste in a sauce. Once I got that, then everything was easy!
Really this isn’t a hard recipe and once again, very easily customizable. Honestly, if you already have your own spaghetti sauce that you are proud of, by all means use it!! My sauce recipe is mostly credited to my mom because she taught me how to cook spaghetti but of course, to make it my own, I added a couple of things that are my own (but she has a couple of times used a couple of my ideas for her own sauce!!).
Out of the ingredients, you can choose what ingredients to put in of course. I love putting mushrooms and little slices of hot dogs in it but I know it is not for everyone so feel free to add what you like (after all you are the one cooking!!)
On a note though, I apologize in advance that I don’t have measurements for some of the ingredients. It’s hard to really measure some of this stuff because I just go by taste and not by quantity. I guess that’s kinda my thing when it comes to cooking.
ingredients
Lean ground beef
About one medium sized onion (you can have more if you like)
1 Head of Garlic
About 2 or 3 Bell peppers (I personally like the red and orange ones)
Package of hot dogs of your choice
2 cans of sliced mushrooms
2 jars or big cans of tomato sauce (I usually use Ragu)
About 4 tablespoons of sugar (might need more according to your taste)
Salt and pepper
Shredded Cheese (mozarella, cheddar, whatever you like)
instructions
First and foremost, I cook the macaroni. I’m sure you all know how to cook pasta so I’m not going to elaborate too much on it. A tip though … when they are cooked to how you like them, drain them with a collander/strainer under some cold water so that the macaroni doesn’t stick to each other. It’s a neat trick I learned watching my mom cook spaghetti.
Then, while the macaroni is cooking in the pot, I start the chopping of all the veggies and putting each chopped item in bowls or containers to keep them separated. I usually dice everything because I don’t like my sauce too chunky with veggies. Sometimes I dice the bell peppers into a bit bigger size depending on the preference of the person I am cooking for. I definitely dice the onions well because I am not actually a huge onions fan but the flavour does contribute to the sauce, so of course, I have to put onions in.
After the veggies are all done, I slice up the hot dogs as well. These I don’t mind being bigger in size when I chop them because the hot dogs seem to be a favourite ingredient among people (and me as well) so I like to be able to bite into them when I’m eating.
The mushrooms are already sliced but I still give them a good chop or two since sometimes the sizes of the slices they come in are pretty large. Again I get containers and keep all my chopped items in separate containers.
So by now the macaroni is all cooked and set aside. Time to grab another big pot and start cooking the sauce!! I dab in the pot, a teeny tiny bit of oil (I usually do about a tablespoon) at medium heat. I wait until the oil is a little hot (but not too sizzling hot) and I dump in the onions and garlic to start off the flavour. The reason I don’t want the oil too hot is because I don’t want the onions and garlic to burn right off the bat. I want to be able to fry the onions and garlic at a decent time and not have them all black and smoking. Take your spatula and move them around the pot for a minute or two and then add in your ground beef.
Cook the ground beef until it is brown. You will notice that the meat will start to juice quite a bit. Just once in a while, drain the pot of the juice because that’s all fat. You don’t really need to drain to the very last drop or anything because of it will actually contribute to the taste so a little leftover is okay but try to drain as much as you can.
Once the beef is nice and brown, add in the bell peppers and continue to cook. Make sure to continue moving bottom stuff of the pot to the top over and over and evenly cook everything or else it will all just burn on the bottom. Maybe about 5 minutes of stirring, open up your can of tomato sauce and pour it in. You can increase the heat a little more now too. Keep stirring the pot and wait until you have a rolling boil. When it start to boil, move it back to medium heat and add in your hot dogs and mushrooms.
Continue to stir and then cover the pot with a lid and let it simmer. Stir the pot once in a while to keep things cooking evenly. I usually do this for a good 15 minutes. Now, time for a taste test. You will notice it doesn’t taste like much so I start to add in some sea salt (better for you), and pepper. Stir. When you start to taste a little hint of saltiness, add in some sugar (try about 3-4 tablespoons) and play around with the taste. You can put the heat lower at this point because if it is too hot then the heat will just make the sugar taste sour and it will be harder to get the taste you want AND you don’t want to keep dumping too much sugar in there. I basically just play around with the sugar and salt. Normally I actually like it a little sweeter because that’s the Filipino style. If you don’t like too sweet then you know how much of each to put in.
Once the taste is to your liking, turn off the heat and set aside. Pre-heat your oven (or you could have done this earlier) to 350 degrees Celsius. Go back to your macaroni and grab a baking pan. I find the glass ones are really good for cooking these kind of dishes or the ceramic pans are good too. Fill up the pan about halfway with macaroni. DO NOT FILL TO THE TOP. You are going to be adding in the sauce and cheese so you do not want things to overflow. Add in the sauce slowly, a ladle at a time. When you put in about 2 scoops, mix the macaroni and sauce around to guage how much more sauce you want to put it. You don’t want the macaroni to drown in it and at the same time you don’t want it to be too dry. Just put enough sauce to coat everything and where it doesn’t look dry.
When you feel it’s enough sauce, then add the shredded cheese. I like having a mix of mozzarella and mild aged cheddar. It is better to get the block of cheese and shred it yourself but it IS a lot of work. So once in a while I do get the pre-shredded cheese just to save myself some time and effort. Add a good layer of cheese on top. Don’t overdo it though because you don’t want to have too thick of a layer of cheese. Surprisingly it will actually ruin the taste of the whole thing. Usually a good coat to cover everything is good enough because once it melts, it will get all the creases and nooks that you think you didn’t cover.
When the oven is ready, pop the pan in and let it sit until the cheese is melted! Normally it only takes about 10 minutes or so depending on your oven. I have a gas stove so it’s pretty quick for me otherwise just monitor it.
Once it’s ready, take it out and let it cool. It’s optional to add some parmesean cheese (but I recommed it!!) Then you are ready to slice and serve!!!
It’s not really that hard to make, just a little time consuming but it’s worth it!! It’s a great dish because it’s amazing left over food. This stuff tastes great when it comes to a day or two old. You can even choose to freeze it if you like and save the rest for another day!
Some additional options for this dish:
-can add some cottage cheese to mix in the baking pan with the macaroni and sauce to make it feel like more of a lasagna feel to it
-you are welcome to add more kinds of veggies
-if you don’t like hot dogs, pepperoni slices are also another GREAT taste addition to pop some flavour (or you can do both!)
-if you want to be even more healthier, you don’t have to do ground beef. This also tastes GREAT with ground chicken or turkey!
So hope you guys really like this dish. Would love to hear your variations on it!!
Category: baking, cooking, entries