Baked Spinach Pasta

I'm really hoping to try Jessica's Baked Spinach Pasta soon. It sounds amazing! I love that it uses fresh spinach rather than frozen. This is on my meal plan for next week!

Baked Spinach Pasta

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 2 cans stewed or diced tomatoes
• 1 jar of spaghetti sauce (I prefer Bertolli tomato basil)
• 1 onion
• Italian seasoning
• Garlic
• Salt and pepper
• 1 box of penne or bow tie pasta
• 1 lb of spinach- chopped (I find baby leaf much easier to chop)
• 1.5 bags of shredded Italian cheese (2 cups portion bags)

Preparation

• Chop the onion finely.
• Put the onion and meat in a frying pan. Brown the meat, seasoning it with Italian seasoning, garlic, salt and pepper.
• Drain off any fat.
• Drain most of the juice from the diced tomatoes and add the two cans to the browned meat.
• Let simmer for about 8-10 minutes, stirring often.
• Add jar of spaghetti sauce and let simmer for 20-30 minutes on low, stirring occasionally. You want the meat, tomatoes and sauce to get a lot of flavor and the simmering does this. You can’t really simmer too long. Just let it simmer while you do the next steps.
• While the sauce is simmering, go ahead and chop all your spinach finely with a chopper.
• Boil your noodles in a large pot (so you can use it to mix all the ingredients.)
• Once your noodles are cooked, drain the water.
• Add 1 bag of cheese to the pot of hot noodles and stir so the cheese starts to melt.
• Stir in the spinach and the meat sauce.
• Pour everything into your pans – this usually makes an 11×17 and an 8×8 pan of pasta for me.
• Sprinkle the tops of both pans with the other half bag of cheese.
• Bake for 30 minutes at 375 so everything can bake together and the cheese will melt on the top. Enjoy!

 A couple notes: Jessica does not recommend using frozen chopped spinach in this recipe. It waters it down and is not nearly as flavorful. Also, do not use a food processor to chop the spinach, as it chops it too fine.