Do you get into a pasta slump in your household? I find there’s only so many times you can have spaghetti and spaghetti sauce without wanting to switch it up. Which is why I totally jumped on board when I saw this recipe for Italian rigatoni pie from Noble Pig. You use a spring-form pan, stand up all the rigatoni noodles in it and suddenly you have a new and exciting way to serve pasta!
There are other recipes out there where you make the sauce from scratch, but my busy kids don’t give me enough time for that! I like to use a jar of my favourite pasta sauce instead. If you prefer to make the sauce yourself, I’m sure it would be even more delicious!
Three Cheese Italian Rigatoni Pie
Ingredients
- 1 pound Rigatoni
- 1 jar of your favourite pasta sauce approximately 2.5 cups, give or take. If it's slightly more or less, just use it all
- 1/2 cup of water
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil divided
- 1 pound ground beef or ground pork
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1 container cottage cheese or ricotta cheese
- 1 large egg
- 1-1/2 to 2 cups mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- Cook the Rigatoni in a large pot of salted, boiling water. Make sure you use enough water because the rigatoni sucks up a lot. Cook it about 1 minute less than the package directions so it is still hard enough to stand up. Drain the pasta and rinse under cold water.
- Toss pasta with 1 Tablespoon of oil to prevent it from sticking. Then add the parmesan cheese and toss until the cheese is evenly distributed. Set aside.
- In a large frying pan, brown the ground beef in 1 Tablespoon of oil. Drain away the fat once it's cooked.
- Add the jar of pasta sauce and water and bring to a boil.
- Reduce heat. Cover and simmer for at least 20 minutes. The longer you simmer the better. Just make sure you add more water if it all boils off.
- Remove from heat and let it cool for 10 minutes.
- Mix together the container of cottage cheese and the egg. Set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Grease a 9 inch sprinform pan.
- Take the cooked rigatoni and stand each piece up on its end in the pan. Continue until the whole pan is tightly packed.
- Pour the cottage cheese mixture over the rigatoni and spread evenly over all the noodles.
- Pour the meat mixture over top and spread evenly over the noodles. Use your finger to poke the meat and cheese mixture down into the noodles. The more patience you have with this step, the better it will be.
- Bake for 15 minutes at 400F.
- Remove from the oven and top with the mozzarella cheese.
- Bake for another 15 minutes at 400F.
- Let stand for 10 minutes then run a knife around the edge of the pan to help remove the springform pan.
Boil the rigatoni in plenty of water. It absorbs a lot of water and you don’t want it sticking together. Cook it about 1 minute less than the package directions suggest. You need it to be hard enough that it will stand up on its own in the springform pan. Rinse with cool water and then toss it with some oil to prevent it from sticking together.
I love fresh Parmesan cheese! I definitely recommend grating it fresh if you can.
Add the Parmesan cheese to the rigatoni and toss until it’s well mixed. Be careful not to break the noodles while you are stirring.
Brown the ground beef or ground pork. I used beef, but I’ve noticed that pork is half the price of beef right now, so I’ll definitely make it with pork next time.
Add the jar of pasta sauce and some water to the ground beef. I used a 645mL (roughly 2.5 cups or 20 oz) jar of Prego Mushroom and Green Pepper Sauce. I find it has a great flavour when you mix it with the ground beef.
Mix well, cover, and simmer for at least 20 minutes since the sauce will taste better the longer you let it cook. You could even let it cook an hour or two if you want. You’ll just have to make sure you add plenty of water so the sauce doesn’t boil away on you.
Now here is where your patience comes in. You’ll have to take each one of the rigatoni noodles and stand it up on its end in the sprinform pan:
Make sure they are compressed enough that you have a good quantity of noodles, but still enough space for the sauce to drop through.
Mix together the cottage cheese (or ricotta cheese) and egg together for the cheese filling:
Pour this cheese mixture on top of the noodles and spread evenly over top.
Make sure you have let your meat mixture cool for at least 10 minutes, then pour it on top and spread it evenly over the noodles. Use your finger to poke the meat and cheese down into the noodles. The more noodles you can get the sauce into the better. It takes a bit of time, but it’s not too bad. Just make sure you’ve let the sauce cool or you’ll burn your fingers… like I did…
I’d recommend putting the springform pan on top of a cookie sheet before you pour the sauce on. Some of the sauce will leak through the spring form pan, depending on how watery your sauce is, and it’s easier to keep everything clean if there is something to catch it.
Bake for 15 minutes at 400F, then remove from the oven and top with the mozzarella cheese.
Bake it for another 15 minutes at 400F until the cheese is bubbly. Let it stand for about 10 minutes before removing it from the springform pan.
Use a knife to cut around the edge of the pan and then open and remove the sides of the springform pan.
Swap out the noodles and this is pretty much the exact recipe I use for lasagna and for regular spaghetti and meat sauce.
It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes to use the same ingredients in a different way. Switch to rigatoni and suddenly it’s something different that most people haven’t had before!
I would definitely serve this to friends or family who came over for dinner.
You can see that the more sauce you get down into the noodles the better! Yum!
Serve this at your next dinner party, or make it at home just to spice things up a little bit. It was a huge hit in our family and a fun way to rethink how we make pasta for dinner!
I absolutely love this dish!! I’ve made it 3 times already and am about to make it for the 4th. I actually enjoy making it, and everyone I make it for loves it–Thanks for a great recipe!!!
I made it with ricotta cheese instead, and used a piping bag to fill the rigatoni with the cheese.
Getting ready to make this tomorrow. Thanks for the idea of using a piping bag.
Yes. Excellent idea. I am baking a cake later and have all my tips & bags out already. Brava!
Great Presentation Idea, but being some what of a purist, I would never use ready made store bought sauce. Home made is easy and much better and healthier for you. Just read the Ingredient list on the jar and put it back on the shelve. Chef Robert
I made this recipe and it was a hit with my family. delicious! and innovative My family talks about it all the time and they think I am the BOMBDIGGITTY for having taken the time to stack up the noodles. hehehe
Thanks! It drives me crazy when that happens. Their pin has a ton of repins as well. So annoying!!!
I always try to get to the original source before I pin something. I wish others did as well.
You can definitely report their pin to Pinterest and it will be taken down. I don’t know what you can do about their posting of your pics to their site, but at least they didn’t post your whole article there. To get the recipe, it directs you back to this site (but not to this page, I think).
Pinterest doesn’t make it easy. When they delete pins, they delete all pins using a certain image, which means any pins leading to my own page here would be deleted as well. I’ve tried to ask Pinterest to just delete the pins to pages who stole my images, but it would appear that there are no humans working in the copyright department who can actually answer my questions. Very frustrating!
I found this site via that foodiletto site. They had a link to here. So at least they are leading to you 🙂
I have some vegetarians in the family…do you think it would work without the ground beef??? I’m thinking it should..
I would recommend using a chopstick to push the sauce into the the rigatoni! You don’t have to wait as long for the sauce to cool and your hands don’t get as dirty.
HI, it looks Delicious.
I’m making this for about the 6th time because I think it’s a really fun dish to make but want to make it for someone else for tomorrow. Do you think it would be OK to make the night before and they just bake it the next night or would it not be as good?
this is one of my best dishes , hope to make-it soooon!
paul c.
So glad you like it, Paul – enjoy!