Vegan baked ziti has become a constant fixture at holidays for us over the last decade. It’s easy, it’s fast and it’s good – a triple threat that will usually net a family of four two meals out of one tray.
INGREDIENTS
2 boxes of ziti
3 jars of tomato sauce
2 bags of mozzarella style shreds
1 package of Italian sausage
olive oil
EQUIPMENT
Tin foil
baking pan
pot
strainer
frying pan
Difficulty and time depends on how diligent you want to be, of course. If you want to make sauce from scratch, that’s certainly an option, but in this case, I’m using jarred sauce. I tend to go with Classico. Their Tomato and Basil is a good choice, but they have a lot of vegan options.
There’s several vegan mozzarella choices these days, but I usually go with Daiya’s mozzarella style shreds.
Once I bring the water to a boil, I cook my ziti for 11 minutes. Then drain it and return it to the pot and drop two tablespoons of olive oil in there. If you don’t have any olive oil, sauce works too. Just enough to keep it from sticking is good enough for now.
I like a little bit of oomph in my baked ziti, so while the pasta is bowling, I brown four lengths of Italian sausage in a little olive oil – a table spoon or so. Field Roast is my current favorite, but any vegan Italian sausage will do. I don’t usually cut it until after I brown it and whether you go length wise or whatever – it’s up to you.
This would be a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees!
We’re ready to assemble! Cover the bottom of your pan with ziti and add sauce. Give it a good covering – you can’t really add too much sauce. Ever see anyone put sauce on a pizza dough? That’s a good method – you may want to be more generous than that. We don’t want it to get dried out in the oven, especially the sides, particularly on the top layer.
Once you can’t see the bottom of the tray and have added your sauce, do a layer of cheese, then drop in your sauce and put the rest of your pasta on top of that. Add the sauce and cheese again and cover with tinfoil.
It’s time to bake!
We’re baking at 350 degrees, but since everything has already been cooked, this won’t take too long. Set a time for 30 minutes and see how your top layer of cheese is doing. Depending on your oven and the brand of vegan cheese you choose, results may vary. For my old oven, I needed about 40 minutes, then I’d take the tinfoil off and let that top layer get a little hotter for another 10 minutes. These days, I’m closer to 30 minutes, then another 10 minutes. You don’t want to be guilty of peekaboo cooking (opening and closing the oven constantly and letting the heat out), but you don’t want the thing to burn, either. Pasta gets kinda hard and plasticy if over cooked.
I’d love to hear your results, tips and thoughts in the comments!
Bergen County NJ Vegan 