The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Baked Ziti

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Kids say the darndest things, and so do Deb and Kenji. “Nobody likes penne.” “Chiffonade is pretentious.” “I have honestly no idea what my recipe contains.” And they’re not the only ones. There are people out there who call baked ziti — get this — lasagna. While baked ziti may be universally loved as a workhorse of catered buffets, potlucks, and meal trains, Deb and Kenji’s takes on the dish are worlds apart.

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I told my husband we were doing a baked ziti episode and he immediately, without missing a beat, he goes, what? No fucking ziti? And it's from the pilot episode of The Sopranos, and you've got like a little AJ Soprano, and he's just like a little kid, and he finds out grandma's not coming to dinner. He's not concerned about that. She's not coming. Who?

Grandma just called. Started crying and hung up. She needs a purpose in life. No, your mother is tougher than you think. So what, no fucking Ziti now? Hey! It's so funny. You're just like, what came out of his mouth? Everybody else thinks about that when they think of ZD, right? I have not seen The Sopranos, but I know that line though. I know this line because it gets

quoted to me. Anytime I mention ZD, there's going to be a comment that says no fucking ZD. It's just like he's such a little kid with such a mouth. And the thing is, I think I watched that before I had kids, and now I have two, and I still find it funny that this kid has such a mouth. You know, for some reason in my head, I always thought it was James Gandolfini saying that, because I'd never seen the show. Yeah, so that's last night we were trying to fondly remembering some of his other hilarious slides when he's like, I thought we were from Nobbly Dabbly, dad.

And then I was reading up on ZD today, as one does before they record a big ZD episode of their podcast where they're supposed to pretend that they know things about things as I fake weekly. So I was reminded that apparently they refer to box of ZD as like $1,000 in an episode. Like how many boxes of ZD? So there was another soprano's thing with ziti. Got it. Okay, so we're talking about like not mob ziti, but like actual eating ziti now?

We both ate ziti last night. Well, I technically didn't. Because I made mine with penne. Am I allowed to do that? Can I still call it big ziti if it's made of penne? Is penne the worst pasta? What? What do you think is the worst pasta. Is penne the worst pasta? What? What do you think is the worst pasta? Is penne the worst pasta?

The worst pasta shape. Well, certainly not penne. Oh my goodness. What would it be for you? Probably angel hair. But only because it's like so difficult to get it right. Cause angel hair has such high surface area cause it's so skinny.

You know, so when you have a spoonful of it, you get tons of surface area and so lots of starch. And so angel hair tends to get clumpy, you know? And so it tastes like the angels have like, you know, took a dip through some pudding, you know, and let it dry in their hair in the clumps. I think everybody uses angel hair wrong, and that's why they think they don't like it.

But I think it's meant for like lighter, thinner sauces, but you also do need a higher volume of sauce than you might think because I put it on the cover of my last cookbook, actually. Do you know what you call a penne that you're using in place of ziti? No. What do you call it?

An impasta. Well, you're a dad now, so I get it. I always thought penne was like the lamest shape of pasta. But that's because it's very rarely used with things that taste good. I use those ziti with- I feel like penne is one of those things that tastes good in almost all situations.

To me, it's like an all-purpose really good sort of tubular pasta, especially when it's like penne, when it's got the ridges on it. I just associate it with catering trays that have been heated for hours, so it's just lost all... Oh, sure. Yeah. ...identity, like this pudding right now. But actually, I would say my least favorite pasta shape is bucatini.

I contend that if you make a chart where you have penne on one end and bucatini on the other, ziti is in the middle of that chart. That's wild. Ziti is the child of penne and bucatini. We have been agreeing so much on this show this season that we need this for ratings. From PRX's Radiotopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for The New York Times.

Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen and the author of three best-selling cookbooks. We've both been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades, and we've got the same basic goal, to make recipes that work for you and make you excited to get in the kitchen. But we've got very different approaches, and on this show, we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes, comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week on The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, we're talking about baked ziti. So Deb, we're going to be talking about baked ziti. There's a few elements that go into baked ziti, and you know, you baked my ziti. So Deb, we're gonna be talking about baked ziti.

There's a few elements that go into baked ziti, and you know, you baked my ziti and I baked your ziti. And what I found really interesting was that our recipes are actually pretty drastically different. Not just in the way that we treat the pasta and the tomatoes and the cheese, but also sort of the basic ingredients because mine is a sort of vegetarian recipe,

and yours has meat and greens in it. So Deb, when you think of Ziti, what comes into your head here? What are you thinking? What are you picturing? I picture a lot of catering. I picture a buffet, like a luncheon or something like that. Chafing dish, that's the word I was thinking of.

Disposable aluminum or like a hotel pan? No, like hotel pan, but though I've seen both, because if people order food to their house, it'll be the disposable one. And I don't have the most positive associations with it because you can't just continually heat pasta. It's just going to keep cooking. There's no, like you drink the sauce.

It gets softer and softer. It's just mushy, mushy, mushy noodles. There's no lifeline. There's no al dente. But there is something comforting because baked pasta, mushy, mushy noodles. There's no lifeline, there's no al dente. But there is something comforting, because baked pasta, it's not necessarily the al dente texture of the pasta that you're getting,

but when you bake it, you get all new textures built into, right, you get the crust and the crispy bits around the edges, and you get those like little bits of dried out brown pasta that are kind of poking out at the top, you know, that I really like, those crusty toasty bits. But I agree also though, that if it's been sitting like in a chafing dish under a lid

and all that texture has just been steamed away, that's when you sort of run into trouble. And you know, it's sort of been absorbing steam from the steam bath underneath and all the salt is getting diluted and the pasta's getting mushier and mushier. I too associate baked ziti as like, it's like a party dish, you know,

it's like a thing that you put out so that people can scoop and serve, like at a cafeteria or a wedding or a family reunion setting. And you said scoop and not like cut. It's not cut like lasagna. There's no- Well, when it's done well, it can be cut, right?

When it's nice, when it's like fresh out of the oven and it's like, it's really done. When it's at its best, you should be able to cut it and get a nice sort of crispy edge, a nice clean crispy edge to it, I think. But I think it's definitely a staple, and we definitely associate it with like, like Italian American type cuisine,

but I kind of, there is a long history of baked like all forno dishes. Like you can, in Italy, like it's a thing. It's a thing that's existed for a long time. You know, you could have, there's a lot of things that are baked in an oven that have cheese and pasta. Well, baked ziti, I mean, not just Italy,

all over the Mediterranean. Baked ziti though, in particular, you know, it's a Southern Italian, it's a Sicilian thing. So, you know, it makes sense that it became such an Italian American staple, just because a lot of our, a lot of the Italian American food came from Southern Italy. Let's go through the elements. Let's first talk about the pasta.

You got the ziti. Yeah, so ziti, what is ziti? Ziti is an extruded pasta shape. Let's first talk about the pasta. You got the ziti. Yeah, so ziti. What is ziti? Ziti is an extruded pasta shape. It's kind of like medium, kind of a medium size tube, I'd say. Yeah, so when you say extruded, this is as opposed to like a rolled out pasta. So like a rolled out pasta would be something that gets like a dough that gets pushed down between two rollers and comes out in like a flat sheet

that you can then cut into like tagliatelle or linguine or you can fold it into ravioli, right? Whereas an extruded pasta, you take the dough and push it through a die. So those you tend to get like sort of tubular or round or curly pasta shapes. So like. It's very satisfying to watch.

You can watch the little slicers going at it. Like as extruded. Yeah, I mean, the extruder is like, is your Play-Doh pasta, right? Exactly. Oh, it's the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop of pastas. Yes, this is what they call it at Berea and the Czech. They do?

Yeah, the Fuzzy Pumper. So anyhow, ZD is an extruded pasta that's basically like a straight tube with no ridges on it, sort of medium thickness tube. So it's like, yeah, it's got a little bit of chunkiness to it and a little bit of bite to it. And the hole in the middle is like big enough that like a very little kid could stick their pinky

into it I think, but not an adult. Yeah, we miss out on that. Unless you're like me and you always use rigatoni instead. Like the more- You like rigatoni. I just like the bigger texture. Rigatoni is probably one of my favorite pastas. I like you just get more- So I'm just shocked that you love rigatoni

and that you would throw penne under the bus. Penne is so boring. I just, I can't, it's like the pointy, I think it's just usually when penne is out, it's not being cooked in a good way. So those are the associations. You have, we're just getting started all the ways I'm gonna disappoint you in this.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you've disappointed me plenty in the past, so we'll see. You've got the ziti, which is the pasta that's traditionally used, although you can be difficult and use penne or rigatoni if you wish. So one of the biggest differences between our ziti recipe is that mine, you start by fully cooking the pasta or mostly cooking it al dente.

And yours, it actually cooks while it's baking. And I could talk about this for hours, but I will try to restrain myself because I actually do that with my ziti sometimes. I don't have, I meant to pull it up. I have a certain amount of water that I will sometimes add to the sauce. And then I add like 15, 20 minutes of baking time. I don't feel so good. So wait, let's talk about this for a second.

So in yours, I think you could recommend cooking it two minutes less than the box time. The idea is that once you get into the sauce and baking is still going to absorb some water, it'll absorb water less quickly actually because the sauce is acidic and it just doesn't absorb as fast as plain water does, but it'll continue to absorb some sauce

and so the pasta will continue cooking as it bakes. And so the idea is you want the pasta to still have some bite at the end when you're done baking. In my recipe, you take the pasta and you soak it in water first. So it's like the idea is that you kind of separate the hydration step and the cooking step of the pasta. So you kind of soak it in water first. So the idea is that you kind of separate the hydration step and the cooking step of the pasta. So you kind of soak it in water for a while first

until it's hydrated. So the water is inside the pasta, but the starch in the pasta hasn't cooked yet. So it's still raw, but it's like slightly tenderized. And so then essentially once you get it into the sauce, all you have to do is heat it. So you don't need to add that sort of like extra 15, 20 minutes of cook time necessarily.

You do have to soak it for 30 minutes. The trade off is am I boiling a pot of water and adding the pasta in there and draining it, or am I just like soaking it in a bowl of water? Honestly, the reason I had it in my recipe, it's like, you know, I think of recipes as like a sort of a snapshot of what you were thinking at the time, you know,

whatever phase you're going through at the time. And I was experimenting a ton with just separating, teasing out the difference between hydrating pasta and boiling pasta and sort of playing with recipes that could take advantage of the fact that those are sort of two separate processes. Do you remember this blog called Ideas in Food? Did you ever look at that?

I still follow their Instagram. They're wonderful. They've got a donut shop, I haven't been there, but yeah, they're wonderful. Curiosity Donuts, yeah. Alex and Aki, we used to work at the same restaurant like 20 years ago. That's so cool. They're brilliant but yeah, they're wonderful. Curiosity donuts, yeah. Alex and Aki, we used to work at the same restaurant like 20 years ago. That's so cool.

They're brilliant. Yeah, they're brilliant. I remember 15 years ago, they were talking a lot about pasta and cooking it. And so reading their stuff, I started thinking about that too. And so I was like deep into that phase when I was writing this recipe in the food lab,

which is funny because sometimes I still do that, but most of the time these days when I'm making like a baked pasta thing, whether it's mac and cheese or baked ziti or whatever it is, I will just sort of pre-cook the pasta the way you do, as opposed to soaking it. The only exception being lasagna. Lasagna I always pre-soak instead of pre-cook.

I'll soak for lasagna, definitely, because it's so annoying to manage those floppy large — Big fat noodles, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Not for all of them, but for most of them I prefer just to soak. Plus lasagna is really wet, so it's very easy to just get it baked in the oven. What I was thinking about when I was making your isn't eating it is that when we talk about an easy recipe, it's always just so interesting because are we talking about easy

as in I use fewer pans? With yours, we're probably using fewer pans. We're just soaking them and then there's no real soap top portion. Or are we talking about ease as in, and I come from both sides, or are we talking about ease as in it takes less time? And I think that both- It takes less active time.

Yeah, exactly. So I think that like readers, like people who make our recipes, home cooks, they come on both sides of it. So for yours, I looked, I think I texted you, I was like, oh wow, I'm kind of in a dinner jam. This is perfect. I can just go to the store that's on my corner and not text you at all about a certain ingredient

while I'm there. That's a separate conversation. So while I was like, this is great, I can make this, but then it's not necessarily faster that way. It's just like, I think we're not choosing our poison, but we're choosing the kind of ease we want. So for that kind of eat, it was very hands off. And I was thinking about this, and this is obviously be a different episode,

but a few years ago, I sort of switched away. I made spaghetti and meatballs too. I was doing it all with minimal pots. So it took longer, but you use fewer dishes. Then I started roasting the meatballs while making the sauce and boiling the pasta. So you're using a few pots, but you actually do the whole thing in 45 minutes,

like an entire spaghetti and meatballs meal. So I was thinking about that with the ziti, where it took longer, but it's less work. Mine might take less time, but you've got more cooking steps. So we talked about the pasta. Mine ends up cooking in the oven, yours is precooked. Let's talk about the sauce.

So your sauce is essentially a meat sauce, like a real simple meat sauce. And I think of it as sort of like a good housekeeping style meat sauce where you're essentially just like taking literal ground beef, onions and garlic, you're cooking them all together and then you're adding a can of tomatoes, which is sort of like the first meat sauce

that I learned how to make. That's totally what my mom made for me sauce growing up. When I learned how to cook, like, make a mushroom sauce. It was the same thing, just like, replace the beef with mushrooms, right? It's basically bolognese, but like minus the three hours of cooking. Yeah, I mean, it's the very rough outline of a bolognese,

with like only the core ingredients. So there's no dairy in it, there's no wine in it, there's no other mirepoix, you know, the carrot celery. It's just onions, garlic, and beef. And I think it ends up tasting really good. So I made mine with Italian sausage. Yeah, it's actually one of my favorite ways to make it because it adds so much flavor,

but it's far more common, I think, with traditional classic Italian American CD recipes to use jarred sauce as yours does. To use jarred sauce instead of just canned tomatoes. The canned tomatoes. I just like personally don't love jarred sauce. I find it a little tinny. Oh, even Rayos?

Rayos is probably the best of them, but all of them have to have their acidity braised to be safe for canning. Am I correct, food science expert? Yeah, they need to have, they need to be a certain level of acidity, yeah. They always, so they always taste a little bit more tinny to me. And plus they're already cooked and I love the sweetness of a lesser cooked sauce.

And that's why I prefer starting with canned tomatoes. But again, my recipe- I prefer my sauce cooked by lesser cooks. That's it. But this is a very good cook. Excuse me. No, I definitely, I think everybody agrees, like, from the grocery store brands, it's the best of them.

Although I had a little meltdown at the store, because your recipe called for four cups and the big jar is three and a half cups. And I was like, you can't make me buy a second jar, Kenji. You can't make me do this. Did you buy a second jar or did you just go with the three and a half cups? No, it's expensive. In this economy? I mean, you know, I live-streamed your video yesterday, your recipe last week. Oh, it's expensive. In this economy? Geez. I mean, you know, I live streamed your video yesterday, your recipe.

I'm sorry to get to watch it. Oh, that's fine, but I... I was like, were people heckling you? And I was getting where they were like, oh, that recipe sucks. No, people love the recipe. The end result was wonderful. It looked great. Good.

Everyone said it looked great. I mean, it's a really easy recipe. So it's like, you don't even have to separate, it's one pan, right? Well, one pan plus the pot to boil the pasta, but you're making your sauce in one pan. And it's all real simple. You're basically throwing everything in at the same time.

You have people put in the ground beef, onions, and garlic all at the same time. So let's talk about that for a second, because if you go onto the internet, there will be people probably who read something I wrote or Cooks Illustrated wrote a long time ago that say, never add your garlic and onions to the pot at the same time because your garlic will burn before the onions are done.

It's funny. I literally just looked at my recipe while you were saying it. I'm like, wow, that is so unlike me because I really like drawing the sweetness out of onions before I add the meat. But I think I was like, when I was writing this recipe, and again, we're talking about the recipe, not just the philosophy behind it, but it's impossible for me to separate it. I was thinking about ease I was thinking about weeknight. The thing that we use this recipe for the thing that it's become the staple for the

most since I've published like even before I published it but like the way I was always making is I tend to make this like we're going out and we have a babysitter and I want to know the kids got protein that they got a vegetable and I like, I don't want to order dinner for them. I don't want to order takeout pizza that I'm not even going to get to enjoy myself or be stuck having in the fridge for weeks. It wasn't very good. So anyway, so I tend to make this as like a workhorse meal that I know everybody's going to agree and find filling.

So anyway, but I can tell you it reheats extremely well. And it's also very good for feeding your neighbors because I made a giant batch of it yesterday and then I gave away like six extra portions to the people on the dock here. I did find that interesting also, you know, the ground beef, just throw the onions and the garlic straight in. But you know, that's a shortcut I very frequently take, especially on nights when I'm like, I just want to get stuff done and I know I'm going to be distracted. Like I don't want to have to think about, are the onions going to start burning before

I had the garlic in or before I had the beef in? That has never happened to me. I don't think I've ever burned an onion. I think I would be more like, there's usually a concern like we add the garlic later, but you're gonna have so much moisture from the meat and the fat in it, and it's gonna be, the onions are gonna be kind of seaming.

You've never burned an onion in your life. Trying to imagine, I must have, I've definitely burnt shallots almost half the times that I fry them because I like blink for 10 seconds and then I have to scrape them into the garbage. There are not that many people in the world who I would think just look at and think of as perfect onion cooks. But I burn garlic all the time and that's because recipes tell you like cook it for two minutes and I'm like, that's usually too much.

Like if the pan's hot, you're heating your pan to medium hot. You're putting a garlic clove in for two minutes. And I'm like, that's usually too much. Like if the pan's hot, like you're heating your pan to medium hot, and you're putting a garlic clove in for two minutes. Like what is happening? By 20 seconds, it's getting golden. I usually need to add the next ingredient. Speaking of burning garlic, can we do a quick sidebar into the prison sauce scene? Oh, from Goodfellas?

Yeah, exactly. So when you slice garlic razor thin like that, you're releasing a ton of its juices from inside, including like a ton of sugars and stuff. When you put razor thin sliced garlic into oil, like it burns so, so fast. Like the whole idea that it's going to melt into the sauce, it's like the exact opposite.

If you want garlic to melt into the sauce, you got to leave it bigger, cook it slower, and then kind of mush it into the sauce. If you cut it thinner like that, it doesn't melt. It just ends up getting like crispy and burnt. It doesn't break down as easily. So by the way, what you were saying before, you've never burnt like that, it doesn't melt. It just ends up getting like crispy and burnt. It doesn't break down as easily. So by the way, what you were saying before, you've never burnt the garlic, the onions

in this particular recipe, is that what you meant? Yeah, because the beef adds enough sort of liquid to it that it prevents the onion from softening, right? Also because there's oil in the pan, you'd have to just really overcook them for them to burn. I'm not cooking them long enough to overcook them. That's exactly why you don't have to worry about burning the garlic easier,

because as long as there's, as long as there's some kind of moisture in the pan, whether it's coming from the meat, whether it's coming from the onions, as long as there's moisture in the pan, you're basically restricting the temperature, the maximum temperature of the pan, so you're not gonna burn anything in there really,

until you sort of start to get to that sort of frying, like sizzling. I wasn't worried about it getting soft either, because sometimes I find like they can, I often find like if you start like the ground meat and the onions at the same time, I just don't always get the same softness. But for something like this, it doesn't matter. I think it's going to have that long baking time too. You won't ever notice it in the end. I didn't notice it. I thought it was fine. I think I cooked my meat, my sauce a little bit longer, like before I add the tomatoes, before I

add the liquids. I think I ground the meat and the onions a little bit longer, like before I add the tomatoes, before I added the liquids, I think I ground them eating the onions a little bit longer than your recipe specified, so my onions got pretty soft. But I did have a friend who was cooking along with me on the live stream who sent me a text message afterwards, said that the recipe came out wonderful. The one comment they had was that their kids said the onions were too toothsome. Ooh, that's really crazy. I was like, oh, that would you normally be like, well, I'll just keep that in mind. No, I think she said it was that exact thing you said where if she was doing it, she would have added the onions in a little bit before she added the beef.

So that's they just tenderized a little bit more. But, but honestly I think it worked out just fine. Can we talk about how wild it is that your recipe contains neither onions nor garlic? Like we're literally making ziti and there's no onion or garlic in it. Can I tell you how wild it is that I've honestly have no idea what my recipe contains? Because I haven't looked at it in 15 years. That's actually even funnier. I don't think I would have...

I understand it not needing onions because you're starting with a sauce that really already has. The sauce is the flavor. But I don't think I would have been able to resist adding a bunch of cloves of garlic just to get more of that, you know, essence. I'm frankly surprised they aren't in there. You know, like... I would probably add it myself now. And then you realize it was like missed in edits or something. I'm sure the recipe is fine as it is because it gets good feedback.

But sure, garlic. You like garlic? Add some garlic. We've talked about the pasta. We're just about done talking about the sauce. Yours is sort of a rough bolognese. Mine is a canned sauce. Both of them are super simple. When we get back from the break, we're going to talk about cheese. We're going to talk about baking.

And we're going to talk about what? Things that you could talk about baking, and we're going to talk about what? Oh, things that you could add to it after it comes out of the oven. I'm ready. All that coming up on the recipe with Devon Kenji. What's the cheese order of operation in ziti? I would say the mozzarella is at the top.? I would say the mozzarella's at the top. I would say that the mozzarella's at the top. A ziti that doesn't, like when you scoop into it,

you wanna pull away with like stretchy cheese bits. You want that like, you know, that Instagram shot in a ziti, I think. Yours has excellent cheese pulls. Like even on the like, even after it'd been out for a while. Can you remind me, so mine, I think I cut it into cubes and then you toss it in there. You dice it around, you put half in mixed

and then you put half on top. It is like a heart attack on a cracker. It's completely delicious. Cheese was in mine, I can't remember. It's an absurd amount, right? It's a pound of mozzarella because you don't have like other things in there. Like I'm like, yeah, mine also has a big block of cheese

in it, but look at all that spinach, okay? So it's, mine's basic so mine is basically a salad. Yeah, there's four ounces of spinach and like 12 ounces of mozzarella and a pound of ground beef really. Did that four ounce bother you? Cause the baby spinach comes in five ounce packages and it does upset me that I wrote it that way.

So it did and I put in the whole package. Good, cause I do too. I put in four and then I said, screw this, I'm adding in the other. In contexts like this, I actually prefer, you know, mature spinach, adult spinach. So it doesn't fall apart. I find prefer mature spinach, adult spinach. So it doesn't fall apart. I find that baby spinach, it ends up, to me, it just reminds me of a bit of a paper towel

that you left sitting in the kitchen sink and it just kind of gets pulpy and gross. Tell me what you really think. No, I can see that. As I said, this was for me, it's about function and ease. Do I prefer grown up spinach to baby spinach? Yes. I like my greens to have some heft in the backbone. But like a packet, something I can get in a quick packet, it's already washed.

I don't have to stem it, like I can just throw it right in. That's why for me, it's like a good, it's a really easy way to add greens. Plus it cooks really fast. Like, so the cheese hierarchy, mozzarella's at the top. And in yours, by the way, your recipe, you add yours nacho style. Like you do a layer of pasta and sauce,

then you add a layer of cheese, which I forgot to do the first time and I had to scoop out the pasta. So I could add a layer of cheese. So you add a layer of mozzarella, shredded mozzarella and Parmesan, then you add another layer of pasta and sauce, and then you top it all.

So it's almost like you're constructing like a little mini lasagna. And in fact, Deb, do you know anybody, do you know people who call, I think this is like a little mini lasagna. And in fact, Deb, do you know anybody, do you know people who call, I think this is like a Midwest thing, do you know people who call baked ziti lasagna? Any kind of baked pasta lasagna? No, but it is so close in ingredients

that I don't, it's basically like an unstructured lasagna. So I can see why. I've met families that say we're gonna have lasagna and it's like baked ziti and they're like, oh, we're from Chicago. That's what we call it in Chicago. No, if you told me you were giving me lasagna and it's like baked ziti and they're like oh I would not like that so we call it in Chicago no if you told me you were giving me lasagna and I got ziti I'd like flip the table over and flip that's how they do it in New York yeah so in the hierarchy of cheeses I think you know the three classic cheeses

for ziti are mozzarella parmesan is pretty common I use pecorino romano it's got a little more of a sharp bite I I like it better with the meat and the greens. I feel like it just wakes up more. And ricotta, except for your co-host doesn't like baked ricotta. So I don't put ricotta in my seasoning. You don't like baked ricotta? Yeah, that's me.

I don't love baked ricotta either. I like it, I kind of like it the way you do it. I don't like the texture. Then let's talk specifically about the texture of ricotta, because it can vary a lot depending on what brand you're getting and what type of ricotta you're getting. And I find a ricotta at the store that I like so much. It's a Fina style ricotta, which is like a fine,

it's very smooth looking. Really fine curd. Yeah, very fine curds. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure you could do this just by blending the ricotta you get, but it doesn't have the chunkiness. But even then, I just, to me, ricotta is a fresh cheese, and it's really good cold and fresh or room temperature and fresh.

It's creamy. Where it still has that creaminess. It gets a little grainier. Yes, and you bake it, especially with acidic ingredients, and it just gets more curdy and dried. Exactly, yeah. I like a dollop at the end. I just don't need it baked inside. I like that too.

I also like a dollop of ricotta on my pizza sometimes. So one of the important things you can do when you're cooking your recipe or any recipe that calls for ricotta, which is something that I wasn't able to do yesterday, is like check the ingredients in your ricotta and get, make sure that you're getting the right ricotta. The way that ricotta is made is that they take the whey

and they reheat it with an acid, right? So the whey left over from making a cheese, right? You reheat that with an acid so that any little bits of like stray protein that are still kind of straggling around there, they clump up together and you strain that out and that's your ricotta, right? The longer you drain it, the sort of obviously richer and thicker it becomes.

And so what some companies do is that rather than spending a lot of time draining it, they'll just add things like guar gum and other stabilizers that basically make it so that the extra whey that's in there just doesn't weep out while it's in the packaging. You know, so it looks like ricotta and it looks smooth and rich and creamy. But then as soon as you start to cook it, those stabilizers break down and all that extra water that you paid for just like kind of weeps out. If you make sure that you buy a ricotta that doesn't have any sort of gums or stabilizers,

like so your ricotta should basically be milk or cream or whey, salt, and then some sort of like acid, you know, it could either be like a vinegar or an added acid or it could be some kind of like starter culture that's going to acidify it. And like those are really the only ingredients that you should be looking for in a ricotta. And if there's like a, you know, like carrageenan

or guar gum, like those are the ones to avoid, especially if you're Going to be baking with it Interesting I'm looking to see the ingredients on the one I like now it has pasteurized milk starter and a trace of salt Maybe that's why I found a single ricotta at the store. The brand is I'm gonna say it wrong. Li uzi, Louisi Cheese if you go to your supermarket and just look at the labels You'll probably find at least one brand that will do you well.

If you're unbothered by what you're buying at the store, just keep doing it. You don't have to change anything if you like what's going on. I say this when people comment on recipes and they're like, well, why would I change this? I like it. I'm like, oh, well, then you're not going to. This recipe isn't for you. Okay.

So we've got the cheese, we've got the parmesan or I use pecorino, you've got ricotta or in my case not ricotta. Well, I don't put it inside and then you've got the mozzarella, which is very important for both a blistered gooey top and those cheese pulls that make it feel ductile. And also has some effect on holding everything together, but I wanted to mention that some classic recipes also contain an egg or two. Mine doesn't, but yours contains two. And was it for binding?

Was it to keep the cheese from getting too clumpy? I was wondering what it was for. Yeah, you know, I think of it almost as, you know, the way you would add eggs to like the filling of, if you're making like stuffed shells or a manicotti filling, you know, where you want the filling to just have a little bit more of, just to bind it a little bit better so that it holds its moisture a little bit better and also kind of holds its shape a

little bit better as you're baking and doesn't just kind of weep around everywhere but you know honestly you don't need the eggs it's a choice right it's do you like do you like that texture that they had or do you not do you want your sort of casserole to have more of a sort of a bit more of sort of firmness and moisture retention to it or do you not mind it sort of like getting a little bit sloppy on the plate and like honestly I don't mind it getting sloppy on the plates eggs are not going to solidify four cups of sauce, a pound of like, a large amount of ricotta.

Oh yeah, it's not going to turn into a frittata, right? Yeah, exactly. It's very far from that. I didn't, I mean, we, when we scooped it, it was loose. You know, it was not a, it was not a thing. I didn't mind it at all. I was like, look, we're getting extra protein. This is good.

So yeah, so yours is two eggs. And I think for us with that, with yours, that's the end of the ingredient list. It's just salt and pepper. I think that's it., that's the end of the ingredient list. It's just salt and pepper. I think that's it. We did all the ingredients. So yours gets post oven ricotta and slivered basil, which you suggested.

I'm not sure exactly what slivered basil. Is that like a chiffonade? I feel like if I say chiffonade, it sounds so pretentious. Like nobody should have to, maybe you don't have the friends that I do. My friends will Google, like my friends will text me and be like,

what the hell is a chiffonade Deb? And I'm like making dinner and I have to text them back and just say, just cut it really thin. So that's why I write it. That's why I write things in plain air English as much as I can. So, but our ziti's are so different from, I, so I made yours and I took it out of the oven and waited 10 minutes because it was very hot. And I took a bite of it and I was immediately transported to a nostalgia that I did not know I had for a very specific kind of ziti that I hadn't thought about it in a long time.

This sounds like very like, but it was basically like, I was immediately reminded of like, I don't know if you go to a pizza shop and they have ziti or you go to like an Italian tally and that's exactly what it tasted like. If that's, and I realized in that single bite, I was like, Kenji is chasing like a specific nostalgia that I realized I don't have for ziti. Like I remembered it, but it was like,

I knew exactly what you were going for. Yeah, yeah. It's like when you go into like DePalo's, you know, in Little Italy, and they got the, you have all of the cold cuts and the cheeses and all the Italian stuff, but then you also have like the display case where they have like, you could get like a slice,

you could get like one big meatball or you can get like a slice of a baked ziti or a slice of a lasagna there. That's so funny. But I have to say, and I think, is this like, is this the right time for me to say it? Which is that my ziti recipe follows a very common theme on Smitten Kitchen for me, which is that

the secret behind probably a lot of recipes on Smitten Kitchen and perhaps even on Some level the reason for the site on Smitten Kitchen and perhaps even on some level, the reason for the site. Is this gonna be like a secret, Deb hates everything? Like Deb doesn't like to eat food? I don't like a lot of things. No, I just, I don't love ziti.

I've never really loved baked ziti that much. So when I'm working, when I was working on my own baked ziti restaurant, I understand the need for it. I wanted my own recipe, but it came from a place of me. Well, what do I not like? Did you feel needy for ZD?

Maybe. Look, my lip is twitching with the lip, it's so bad. It's such a great dish. It's a workhorse. Like wheeze, like if a friend's had a baby or somebody's in mourning or like somebody's really busy and you want to bring, they're recovering from surgery. Everybody loves it, yeah. Everybody loves it.

Yeah. Everyone loves it. You want to freeze it. It reheats real well. It microwaves real well. I love to make a pan of it before we're going out so we don't have to order takeout for the kids like in a babysitter. We use it so much, but I just because I didn't like the kind of usual recipe, which is like

a jar of sauce and a tub of ricotta and a bag of shredded mozzarella. If you like, that's fine, but it wasn't what I wanted. Mine came from a place of like, how can I make one that would be my go to ziti? Mine's much less traditional and it's not going to taste like your nostalgia from an Italian restaurant, but for me it's like a meal in one, which I love because it's got the protein, it's got like a little bit of a green vegetable and it has a little bit of everything. What's funny because you call it old school ziti. Yeah.

Which is like, it's not really that old school. It's kind of like its own thing, well, it's funny because you call it old school ziti. Yeah. Which is like, it's not really that old school. It's kind of like its own thing, right? It's kind of like its own delicious thing. But it doesn't look like the baked ziti you would get at the, you know, in the school cafeteria or, yeah, I guess it's not like the archetypical baked ziti. Oh, I remembered, I just remembered.

So yours has the ricotta, the eggs, the mozzarella, the Parmesan, and I feel like I'm gonna shock you here too, because it's been a while since you made it. It has a cup of cream in it. That's right, yeah, I remembered that. So yours is like a kind of like a pink sauce. Yeah, it's a pink sauce.

I think in mine, you have two sauces. You have a red sauce and you have like your white mixture, which is like cream and ricotta, and then you kind of mix them together just before tossing the pasta in. You know, I've done that also where you, instead of tossing them fully together, you know, you kind of do like a marble, tossing the pasta in. I've done that also where you, instead of tossing them fully together, you kind of do like a marble, like a swirl in there.

So you get like a little bit more distinct white and red bits, which you can definitely do. But yeah, I think of ziti as a sort of creamy dish that's contrasted by the really crisp edges, which is a thing we should talk about. We have not talked about the crisp edges yet. Which I think is the real cream. And mine definitely, you should get the crisp edges.

Mine's much less saucy. But again, this was more about my own philosophy of what I want from a ziti. So mine's definitely less traditional, but mine's got crunchy corners and it's got a lot less goopiness, richness. Yours is much more sort of individual pasta pieces. When I pulled yours out of the oven and started eating it,

what I was thinking was that, it gets really good crispy cheese edges because the pasta's like, it's not like creamy. It's like, you know, just barely sauced pasta. And so the cheese ends up kind of dry around the edges. And so it gets really nice and brown and crisp up. What I was thinking is that it would be fun, you know, next time I make this recipe to kind of really lean

into that and kind of think of it almost like, like the edge of like a Detroit pizza, you know, where I purposely- You could do it in a sheet pan. You could do it in a sheet pan. You could do it in a sheet pan, you could do it in like a deep dish pizza pan, you could do it in like one of those Lloyd's rectangular Detroit style pizza pans.

You could do it in one of those snakey, brownie edges pans, or like the lasagna edge pans. I don't, but anyway, but the idea would be that rather than distributing the cheese evenly over the top, that you specifically like try and get the cheese mainly piled around the edges of the pan so that as it bakes, they kind of seep down into those cracks and a little bit underneath

and so you get like a shelf of like really crispy brown frigo all around the edge of the ziti. So what you're saying is you're an edge person. Yeah, edge me all the way please, yeah. What I was really struck by when I ate yours is like so much of our recipe development is like where we are in the time, like what we're working on.

Like for me, I needed like a workhorse recipe for like busy nights with kids and stuff like that. But so much of what recipe writing and cooking is like chasing some sort of nostalgia. You know what I mean? And as I said, I had that immediate moment when I bit into it, like I remember this. I know this. I've had this before. I didn't think, I didn't even know I was going to be making that until I bit into it. And then I was like, I've definitely had this. I know this. I've had this before. I didn't think, I didn't even know I was gonna be making that

until I bit into it. And then I was like, I've definitely had this. It's not like the nostalgia I was chasing, but it was definitely popular with the family. And the leftovers were great. Like I sent them to my in-laws and then they shared it with my sister-in-law. And it was like, everyone's happy when you make it.

Everyone's so happy. They don't, everyone's so happy that somebody made ZD and they don't have to make dinner. I was gonna say actually, I feel like our two versions of ziti sort of really do sort of accentuate our different approaches to recipes because yours is sort of the perfect family meal,

like the perfect sort of weeknight meal that I did the whole thing live, start to finish in one hour. And the last half hour of that was just me sort of asking people, it was in the oven, I wasn't even cooking it. So it's literally 30 minutes of distracted, hands-on cooking plus 30 minutes in the oven.

So it's kind of the perfect weeknight meal, and it's really no fuss, not much cleanup, and it's something that I would make again and again, you know, or at least, or use as a sort of blueprint as a template for similar things again and again. Whereas I feel like mine is the one that you make if you're willing to spend a little bit more time and also it's probably a little bit too rich for you

to feel like you wanna eat this every night on Tuesday, once a week on a Tuesday night and still be able to work the next day. Yeah, I think they there are two different recipes for two different occasions, you know, which I think is like actually pretty nice that they compliment each other nicely. I have both in my life.

So I appreciate having it. By the way, earlier in the episode, I mentioned that I sometimes do my pasta no bake. I haven't written it into the recipe at all because I don't know, I just haven't. Sometimes when I add too many notes, but I found my note, which I keep for myself, which is that if I'm kind of feeling I don't have the time

and I want to make mine no boil, I actually add two and a half cups of water to the sauce as I'm cooking it on the stove. And then I add the uncooked pasta with the spinach and everything else. And then I bake it. And then you add time to the baking. I was gonna say that I found that I only needed about 15 to 20 minutes extra time.

It might just relate to the pasta. So it ends up spending about 45 minutes to 50 minutes total in the oven. And I was gonna say, I don't use hot water, but I do think I heat it up with the sauce. Like since you've got the sauce simmering on the stove, adding, so it's two and a half cups of water is basically the number I found for one pound of pasta. It's not gonna be a perfect science. And then I just heat that up together. Then I add the uncooked.

So the other thing I change is that I do half the baking time with the foil on like yours is. When you do uncooked pasta, you really need to do some foil on baking. For my city, as it's written on my site, that you don't need to do foil on because you already have the pasta cooked and you're really just bringing everything together

and browning it. For this one, I do 20 to 30 minutes with the foil on and then another 20 to 30 minutes without it, but another 20. Anyway, that's all just in case anyone wants to do it at home. You can turn mine into a no boil. I've done it many times. Before we wrap, I did want to talk about

one specific big ziti, which I think is worth calling out. Have you had the ziti at Parm? No, but do not encourage me. We love Parm way too much. They had big ziti at Parm? No, but do not encourage me. We love Parm way too much. They had Big Ziti at least when they first opened, which was, I guess, I don't know, must've been like 12 years. So, but the Big Ziti there, the way they do it, they did it like a pastizio.

They cooked the pasta, they made the sauce, but then they were very particular about how they layered the pasta into the casserole. And so all the pasta was basically like standing on its end. Then they baked it all together and then they chill it and then they slice it and then they reheat it by crisping it up. And so the circular edges of the pasta

would get nice and crispy. Do they do that vertical ziti? Mm-hmm. Oh God, those piss me off so much. They're so popular. They tasted so good though. No, how do you get the sauce inside? I don't understand it.

It feels like Instagram food. No, this was, I think it existed before Instagram existed. Maybe they're better. But whenever I see a recipe on the internet and somebody's done one of those vertical baked ziti's in the spring form, I'm like, those noodles look empty. No, it wasn't empty or dry. It is sort of fun. And I like the way they try to do their own thing and it looks like they're kind of singeing

it off too. Yeah, so they finish it by reheating it. And the ricotta's on top. Yes. Because they know where ricotta belongs. [♪ music playing. And now for our wrap-up questions. Can I fry it in butter in a pan? So I think one really good way to reheat the ziti is to slice it and fry it in butter.

You slice it, you take the edge that you just exposed with all the bits of sliced pasta, and then you put that face down in butter in a pan or oil in a pan and just kind of slowly crisp it up. I do a non-stick pan, like really slowly. Plus you can get your edges back if you've lost them in the wrapping and the cooling. Exactly, you get brand new edges.

Can you taco ZD? Yeah, why not, right? You can taco spaghetti. I don't see why you can't taco ZD. There's no rule, yeah. I don't know why you'd want to, but you could. You sure? I think you'd want to because it would probably be delicious.

Carbs wrapped in carbs usually are. Yeah. Yeah, it's like ZD but a little cornier, you know? I was gonna say, does ZD leftover? It's like ziti, but a little cornier. I was going to say, does ziti leftover? It's like the left overing. It's like the leftover-iest of the leftovers. It really is made for leftovers. We don't talk a lot about reheating stuff, but obviously you can reheat an already cooked

ziti. But I also love that you could take, especially with the uncooked noodles, you could mix the whole thing and have it in the fridge for even a day or two and then bake it Which is always like a really nice thing for us. You can do that So if that's your philosophy or you're just trying to get some stuff out of the way on Sunday But you want to bake it on Tuesday. That's definitely something you can do. It also freezes really well Kenji, can you get ZD out of kids clothes easily? No, and you definitely it does not come out easily

from like silicon spatulas. Or from the seals of bento box, like kids' lunch boxes. We have several lunch boxes that are permanently stained red because of baked ZD. Yeah, like the spaghetti meatballs container is always a little hard. I'm even picturing around the kids' mouths if they have bad aim, like mine do.

Yeah, permanently red. Oh, like, there's just like orange. It's just permanently red. Exactly. Kenji, can you waffle ZD? mouths if they have bad aim like mine. Yep, permanently red. Oh, like, they're just like orange. It's just like orange. It's just permanently red. Exactly. Kenji, can you waffle Ziti? I am not waffling on waffling. It is waffling right now on my stove top.

In fact, I'm gonna run and flip it over right now because I got one of these old school waffle irons that goes on the stove top. Hold on a second. We will see how that goes. It's smelling really good. It's looking really good. I can't imagine, you know, given that baked ziti when you sort of fry it in olive oil when you reheat it is so good.

I can't imagine that putting it in a waffle iron and letting it get even more surface texture is going to be anything, you know, short of spectacular. It's going to be really good. Yeah. What would be the equivalent? Like what would you use as sauce for a ZD waffle? Would you just use like extra like marinara? I think especially in mine, which is not like the sauciest,

I would probably want a little extra marinara on the side. On the side and then a dollop of ricotta. But I also like the fresh, I like the dollop of fresh ricotta. I like texture contrast. I like acidity contrast. So I tend to like to finish almost everything with something acidic and or something creamy. All right. I'm gonna pull my ZD1 last time. All right it is hot

and it has that kind of caramelized a lot of that caramelized cheese mill going on I have a feeling it probably stuck pretty severely to the waffle iron just because I didn't preheat it properly before I started waffling. Oops are we gonna open? Yeah, sorta. All right, let me see if I can peel it. Let me see if I can pull off a crispy bit and see what it's like.

All right. I feel like a toasty maker would be really nice for this too. A toasty maker would be nice for this. And a little easier for removal. Well, here's like a very crisp maker would be really nice for this too. A toasty maker would be nice for this. And a little easier for removal. Well here's like a very crispy, like the little crispy edges. Oh, that looks really good. Okay, so I think the answer is, does it waffle? Does it waffle?

Yes, it waffles real well. I might even say that waffled ziti is the best ziti. Wow. Maybe a little bit of cheese at the end also. Yeah, I feel like throw a little extra Parmesan on there and get some extra waffle, frico, ziti. Well, I hear by a lobby to have waffled ziti sort of be the official potluck dish

as opposed to baked ziti from now on. I do love that for leftovers. We're not using our waffle irons enough for sure. I want to hear everyone's opinions on Mercadocs. I feel like I cannot be alone on this. I I want to hear everyone's opinions on Mercadocs. I feel like I cannot be alone on this. I also want to hear everyone's opinions on penne. I would like, you know, I offer everyone a penne for their thoughts. Nobody likes penne.

I really pet- At least they do. No they don't, they're faking it. Nobody genuinely likes penne. Nobody's like, penne is my favorite pasta shape. Probably nobody says penne is their favorite pasta shape just because it's maybe a little too generic, but. But I think the reason it's popular is because it's good. No, it's not popular because it's good.

It's just there's a ubiquity to it. It's so strange to me that you're into all these other pasta shapes that are penne adjacent. It's just penne is the one standout. I'm actually not crazy about ziti either. As I said, I definitely make it with rigatoni when I can. And I'm a big fan of Meze rigatoni I just like the big loops and I like the more texture you get certainly in a pasta bake with a bigger center

You've got a better chance for charring and hollow and all those different textures you might want So in a three-way competition between rigatoni penne and ziti I predict rigatoni is gonna come out way on top on that one Wait a second. I just remembered I didn't use penne or rigatoni. Or... Or ZD? I used... Tortiglioni. Tortiglioni.

I don't know what it was. And it basically to me looked like a ridgy ZD. Maybe a little, like not as big as, not as big as rigatoni. Tortellioni is like a, it's sort of like a ziti, but the ridges are a little bit, are pretty, it has pretty wide ridges and they're spiraled. They're like twisted, right? Listeners, that's you, people listening to us right now. We're curious about what your,

not what your favorite pasta shape is, but amongst the choices of these sort of tubular pasta shapes that might end up in a big pasta dish. So ziti, penne, rigatoni, or tortellioni. Which one of those is your favorite? Actually, let's do which one is the one that you would, like is your least favorite, the one that you would kick off the island. Goodbye, Penny. Nice knowing you. That's it for today's episode. Is there another recipe or food you want us to chat about?

Tell us at TheRecipePodcast.com or on socials at Kenji and Deb. Or you can call us and leave us a message at 202-709-7607. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Proman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions. Edwin Ochoa is the project manager. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich, and Yori Lissardo is the director of network operations. Apu Gotay, Emanuel Johnson, and Mike Russo handle our social media. We'll see you next time on The Recipe with Deb and Kenji.