The most expensive ingredient in this dish is time...
This dish starts out with your favorite Italian sausage. However it may be, hot, sweet, three cheese.
You want to brown off the sausage until you have some nice crispies in the pan!
While the sausage is crisping, I will par boil my manicotti noodles and mix up my cheese filling.
I cook the manicotti noodles to just before el dente.
I use ricotta cheese for the stuffing base. To the cheese I add some of the sauce I plan on covering the manicotti with. I also add Italian seasoning(1 TBSP), garlic powder(1/2 tsp), onion powder(1/2 tsp), fresh cracked pepper(1 tsp), and just a little sea salt(pinch). I mix that up well. Once the sausage is browned and cooled, I mince half of it and also add that to this cheese mixture. For a binder I mince up mozzarella and put it into this stuffing mixing very well.
I then delicately by hand stuff each shell and place them in an oven safe dish which I have pre sauced the bottom and sides. (Have your oven preheated to 350°F) Add the remainder of sausage and sauce.
I bake covered at 350°F for 30 minutes. Remove cover, spread mozzarella over the top and return to oven for 15 minutes or until cheese is golden brown. Hint: I finish it off with the broiler! Like a pizza.
