This No-Fuss, No-Boil Baked Ziti Is the Comforting Dinner Your Family Needs

Growing up in an Italian-American household, we ate pasta nearly every night and often my dad would repurpose the leftovers as baked ziti. The cheesy baked pasta casserole has always been major comfort food, but it has its pitfalls. When using leftovers, the texture can end up softer than I prefer, yet making it from scratch feels like you’re making two meals when you have to cook the ziti first before baking it for almost an hour. Luckily, there’s a better way: no-boil baked ziti.

That’s right. It turns out that you can throw all the ingredients into a baking dish, slide it into the oven, and end up with a completely and totally perfect baked ziti.

How does it work? Much like other recently popular recipes where pasta is cooked in sauce rather than boiling water, here the pasta cooks in the oven in a mixture of sauce and milk, plus eggs and plenty of cheese. The milk, tomato sauce, and ricotta keep the pasta moist yet perfectly al dente and deeply flavorful. Diced and shredded mozzarella lend that ooey-gooey quality that’s a requirement for truly exceptional baked ziti, and the eggs help hold the whole thing together.

It still takes about an hour, but very little of that is hands-on; mostly you just toss everything together and throw it in the oven so you can focus on other things (like, in my case, making sure your two young kids don’t wrestle right off the side of the couch or end up trying to climb a bookshelf). Plus, it’s all made in one pan, so I don’t have even more dishes piled up at the end of the night—a major boon for this busy mom.

It also helps that I usually have most of these ingredients on hand—especially real milk. We go through a ton of milk in my house, between smoothies, oatmeal, muffins, and waffles, homemade mac and cheese, drinking it straight, and dishes like this baked ziti. With lots of calcium and high-quality protein, it’s like my secret parental weapon in the fight for good eating habits. This baked ziti is wholesome and supremely delicious. Plus, for growing, super active kids, I feel good knowing that this dish is a great source of protein, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamins D, B12, and A, thanks to all that real milk.

No-Boil Baked Ziti

Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Active time: 10 minutes
Total time: 65 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound ziti or penne
2 1/2 cups homemade or 24-ounce jar high-quality, store-bought red sauce
1 1/2 cups dairy milk
1 pound whole-milk mozzarella cheese, cut into roughly 1/4-inch cubes
12 ounces ricotta cheese (about 1 1/2 cups)
8 ounces shredded mozzarella (about 2 1/2 cups)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
Kosher salt and finely ground black pepper
1/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (about 3/4 ounce, 25g; optional)
1/4 cup minced basil (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Add the pasta, sauce, milk, half the cubed and shredded mozzarella, ricotta, and eggs to a 13- by 9-inch baking dish. Mix well to combine and season with salt and pepper to taste. Top with the remaining cubed and shredded mozzarella.
2. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 40 minutes. Uncover and bake until the cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown, about 15 minutes more. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the Parmigiano-Reggiano, if using. Let cool for 10 minutes, garnish with basil, if you like, and serve.