Better Homes and Gardens Stuffed Pasta

My favorite memories growing up often revolved around food. Not just any food, but pasta. I have absolutely loved pasta as far back as I can remember and whenever I was allowed to pick a restaurant as a kid I would pick the Italian place that had the best ravioli (still the best to this day). As an adult my love of pasta has only increased and I tend to make a pasta recipe about once every week or two. The rest of my family shares my love of pasta and pasta dishes tend to be household favorites. Recently, the September issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine had a recipe for Stuffed Pasta which looked easy and claimed to be a complete meal all by itself.

This recipe has 7 ingredients. It serves 8 people and takes approximately 50 minutes of prep and 30 minutes of baking time. My recipe took an additional 15 minutes to grind my own beef. I actually had to make a few substitutions due to the lack of availability of certain ingredients. I was unable to find dried jumbo pasta shells, so I used regular pasta shells. Since I had to substitute the pasta, I obviously had to make some significant changes to the recipe. Instead of stuffing pasta I made a casserole by layering the sauce, cheese and meat mixture, and pasta.I increased the cooking time by about 10 minutes and tented the pan the last 20 minutes. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

Since I had to make major changes to the recipe, I'm not sure what the original recipe would taste like. The modified casserole that I did make turned out well. Make sure to adequately salt at all steps, or the dish will be undersalted. Other than the lack of salt, this was a very easy and popular recipe with my family, especially my two boys. A straightforward and easy pasta recipe that makes enough for multiple meals.


For the recipe go to Stuffed Shells.