Best Baked Ziti Low Cal Beg for the Recipe Dish

 

Baked Ziti Low Calorie- that tastes amazing!  My whole family always begs for me to make this!  kellyelko.com

I’d rather swim with alligators than clean baseboards.

I’d rather run through a bee hive than clean the shower.

I’d rather give up going to thrift shops for a year than iron (ok, well maybe not that).

I’d rather cook a meal for an army of 200 than clean the oven.

Low Fat Baked Ziti - that tastes amazing!  My whole family always begs for me to make this!  kellyelko.com

I have a confession to make and I know you won’t judge me.  I have never cleaned my oven (shame).

But I do love to cook.  So my oven looks like a nuclear disaster and I always kick myself and ask why oh why didn’t I get a self cleaning oven?

One of our favorite messy recipes is baked ziti.  It’s amazingly delish but I just take it out of the oven quickly and ignore the smoldering mess left behind in my oven.

It’s the perfect one pan dish to whip up with my girls on a Friday movie night – but boy is it messy.

Low Fat Best Baked Ziti

Low Fat Best Baked Ziti

Ingredients

    Sauce (you can use jar sauce or make your own like I do - you will have leftover sauce that you can freeze to use another night)
  • Three (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 medium yellow onion - chopped
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 2 bay leaves
  • salt
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • Baked Ziti
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion, diced
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 4 cups tomato sauce
  • 2 cups part skim ricotta cheese
  • 1 cup 2% low fat cottage cheese
  • 2 large eggs, beaten
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 tablespoons grated locatelli cheese
  • 1 lb ziti, cooked and drained
  • 16 oz part skim shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions

    Sauce
  1. Heat olive oil in a large pot or dutch oven
  2. Stir in onion and cook until translucent
  3. Pour in crushed tomatoes
  4. Add crushed red pepper flakes and bay leaves
  5. Season pinch of salt and a few twists of pepper
  6. Bring to a boil then lower the heat and simmer
  7. Cook for 30 minutes (stirring occasionally)
  8. Baked Ziti
  9. Preheat oven to 350
  10. Cook ziti according to package directions
  11. Heat olive oil in sauté pan
  12. Saute onion and garlic until tender
  13. Stir in tomato sauce and simmer for 10 minutes
  14. Combine ricotta, cottage cheese and eggs in a large bowl and mix well
  15. Add pinch of salt and pepper
  16. Add half of tomato sauce and cooked ziti and mix well
  17. Spread a little sauce on the bottom of a large baking dish
  18. Pour pasta mixture into baking dish
  19. Pour remaining sauce on top
  20. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons locatelli cheese on top of the sauce
  21. Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes
  22. Remove foil and bake for 10 more minutes
https://www.kellyelko.com/low-fat-best-baked-ziti-and-a-chance-to-win-a-lg-easyclean-double-oven-range/

I’d rather spend time after dinner watching a great movie and munching on buttery popcorn – not worrying about cleaning up my oven.

My new motto:  Less cleaning time = more family time!

The solution:  A LG EasyClean™ Double Oven Range with  EasyClean™: A Clean Oven in Minutes, Not Hours.
Not enough time to clean your oven? No worries. LG brings you the new generation of oven cleaning with EasyClean. All LG double oven ranges provide a quick and convenient way to clean your oven while still being able to use the conventional self-clean method. EasyClean works in three simple steps. Spray the oven interior with water, press the EasyClean button, then in just 20 minutes, wipe away any residual bits of grime*. No chemicals or high heat needed to keep your oven sparkling clean. To learn more about LG EasyClean click here.
*Heavy build-up may require additional manual effort or use of the full self-clean feature

This is a sponsored post but I only speak the truth.  See my full disclosure policy here.

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234 Comments

  1. ‘favorite recipe that leaves your oven messy!’ I would have to say my homemade gooey cinnamon rolls
    thank you for this opportunity
    ColleenB.

  2. My favorite recipe that leaves my oven messy every time is my deep dish lasagna.

    Thank you for the fun giveaway!
    Sandra

  3. At present my double ovens won’t work. In fact, the self cleaning one doesn’t even open! I never realized what friends they were. I can still smell the aromas of turkey, pork, chicken and my most favorite of all, and the messiest Leg of Lamb! These are the smells of my childhood…we would open the door when arriving home from church and we could
    catch the waft of “heaven” . Dinner ready!

  4. In need of a double oven! I love to cook and I NEVER clean my oven either – ugh…. messiest meal for my oven is my eggplant parmesan – bubbly delicious 🙂

  5. I hope you got a new oven, Kelly! This one sounds like a dream. I love my LG washer and dryer. TFS! My messiest recipe would have to be oven roasted pork chops or oven baked bacon. Pork always seems to splatter everywhere!

  6. Well…. my secret recipe for making a mess in my oven would be not following the directions for things like apple pie when it says PUT ON A TRAY IN OVEN to catch boil over. Currently I have burnt on apple pie goo in a big black heap at the bottom of my neglected oven.

    Bliss

  7. I not only want that oven, but I need that oven. The door on my oven does not open.Hard to clean an oven if the door does not open! The worst oven clean up is gooey pecan pie.

  8. Pizza or pretty much anything with cheese…and come on, fried stuff with cheese is everybody’s favorite 🙂

  9. Had to check the oven to see what was still clinging to the walls…seems cheesy dishes were the worst
    culprits..so i must go with my lasagna or Rotini casserole as being the messiest.

  10. It would have to be pies for the messiest oven for me. I cannot seem to make one without overfilling. The LG looks great, would love to have one!

  11. Hmm…probably Lasagna – it seems to overflow the dish every time. I never clean my oven either…shh.. that’s my hubby’s job!

  12. I would have to say my grandmother’s specialty enchiladas that made her restaurant famous for 30 years! And this giveaway would be a timely blessing, because our current oven has given up the ghost!

  13. I love to make pecan pies…but sometimes they bubble over and I’ve forgotten to put that cookie sheet underneath. Sticky mess!

  14. My homemade apple pie! I use the apples from my apple tree and make a mile high apple pie that always bubbles over. Even the antique pie bird that I place in the pie does not prevent me from having “apple pie goo” mess on the bottom of my oven!

  15. Roasting chicken seems to always make my oven a disaster zone! Not spending an entire afternoon waiting for the cleaning cycle to work sounds like kitchen magic!

  16. Cannot imagine having an oven that wasn’t self cleaning. Blech! I guess my messiest recipe is anything I cook when I fill the dish too fill. Chicken pot pit comes to mind. I just put a cookie sheet under it to catch the mess!

  17. I love to make Mexican Pizza. Get Pizza dough, cook it for 5 minutes or so and add your favorite taco topping. I add refried beans, taco meat, salsa and cheese. Then after I cook it, I add sour cream – YUM! Cook it again for about 5-10 minutes and your done! Easy delicious dinner in minutes.

  18. Oh, my, goodness! How I would LOVE that oven ! My messiest recipe would have to be Bar B Q ribs or Apple Pie. Wonderful giveaway.

  19. That’s an Awesome Oven, would LOVE to have it….. and my messiest recipe is lasagna, it boils over all the time…

  20. Cherry Turnovers and all their chewy goodness. OMG. Your Ziti looks so delicious. I can hardly wait to make it. Thanks.

  21. There are lots of things that make our oven messy. My daughter likes to bake sweet potatoes and they always drip. When I make Shepherd’s Pie it usually drips gravy all over the oven. Sometimes I actually remember to put the baking dish on a cookie sheet to help prevent spills. A new oven would be so wonderful — ours is 35 years old!

  22. Entry #2: Would love to have an easy to clean oven – I cook and bake so much that I always make a mess!!
    {PS: I was photographing a hero food pic today and I picked a sprig of basil that is practically identical to the one in the top of your pic. In and out of the pictures it moved. So funny.}

  23. Wow! How “bout that? Just press the EASY button and your oven will be clean! We’re in the market for a new range and the double ovens really appeal to me. Your ziti recipe looks so delicious, but I am not familiar with locatelli cheese. The thing that create the biggest mess in my oven is peach pie because it always bubbles over. Thanks for the chance to win a new range!

  24. My favorite recipe thats makes a mess in my oven is usually lasagna for sure, I guess I put to much sauce, but my husband likes alot of sauce.
    (smjohns63 at yahoo dot com)

  25. Oh my… something that leaves my oven messy is my husbands favorite thing in the world… hamburgers! I use a broiler pan to cook them in the oven… but they still manage to get grease everywhere. I have the oven that came with my house, which will be 11 years next month. (I know that isn’t to old but it is about dead) and of course it isn’t self cleaning.

  26. my homemade cherry pie when it bubbles over — but so worth the mess!
    Thanks for doing this great giveaway!

  27. Ziti is a personal favorite, thanks for the recipe! My oven however, not a personal favorite! Would be beyond fantastic! Thanks much!

  28. My scrumdidlyumptious tuna bake casserole can be a tad messy. And I won’t even mention the time I made cheese fries on a plastic plate (hey I was sixteen) which then proceeded tomelt all over the oven :/…

  29. My favorite recipe that leaves my oven messy is my homemade lasagna. It is always so much better when it gets all bubbly!

  30. Great giveaway! That would have to be anything with baked APPLES!!!! They drip, drizzle, squirt everywhere.

  31. YUM – filet mignon wrapped with bacon. I have to lay them on the rack so they less a mess on the bottom even when I place a pan to collect the dripping.

  32. Apple cobblers always make a mess in my oven! Thanks for the giveaway. The ziti looks fabulous.

  33. roast chicken, you cook it at 450 so it splatters like crazy but the skin is so crispy and delicious

  34. Love your blog, new to me, your recipe sounds great too, I too like to create, but skip the cleaning. My messy baking is usually fruit pie (peach)

  35. It never fails that my berry or peach cobblers always overflow and drip down the sides of the baking dish, making
    the worst sticky messes in my oven.
    jslbrown_03 at yahoo dot com

  36. I’m not sure what it’s called but I make a recipe with apples, sweet potatoes, cinnamon, and butter that is very messy.

  37. I love to make roast chicken with herbs, and it splatters grease all over the inside of the oven.

  38. Whenever I make my husband homemade pot-pies, they always over flow onto the bottom of my oven. Always makes a mess. 🙂

  39. Lamb chops under the broiler, they splatter grease and smoke up the kitchen to the point the smoke alarm goes off.

  40. My lasagna makes such a mess and it takes 4 hours to clean! I would love a double oven so I could have things done at the same time. HOPE I WIN.

  41. My delicious apple crisp always manages to slowly spread sweet sugary sucrose secretly surrounding the surface element 🙂 A self-cleaning oven with accurate temperature settings, functioning light inside, and all working elements would be a miraculous replacement for my 20-year-old oven!!

  42. I always thought that “self-cleaning oven” should mean that it took care of everything–including remembering to clean it before you need to use it again….my oven mess is usually from apple strudel–it always leaks and drips off the cookie sheet onto the oven floor.

  43. Favorite recipe that leaves my oven messy….has got to be my apple pie…I always overfill the crust and it boils over, but it is so yummy

  44. Kelly, I’ve never cleaned my oven either. Well, it’s been cleaned once when I was still working outside the home and had a cleaning lady. But that was a long time ago and the oven has since been oozed, drizzled and dripped on many times.

  45. Definitely my Red Velvet Berry Cobbler! It always bubbles over and continues to burn onto the floor of the oven everytime I cook!!!

  46. One of my favorite recipes is my grandmothers mashed potato casserole. It’s not something you eat all the time or anything- it’s one of those special dishes for occasions. Not only is it delicious- it’s the memories of her making that dish.

  47. My cherry cobbler. Every. single. time. I have tried putting those drip pans in the bottom but then they get icky and I throw them away and don’t replace them. Thanks goodness I have a self-clean, I just need someone to remind me to set the self-cleaner. 🙂 Awesome giveaway.

  48. I always manage to drop cookie dough in the oven. I hate it when something drips in the oven but I don’t catch it and the next time it burns.

  49. I tend to overfill my cake pans so I can level them to get a perfect two inch layer, but sometimes they run over nto the oven.

  50. Absolutely LOVE pie….any kind will do for me….but the mess it leaves in my oven, curbs that sweet tooth! 🙁

  51. My homemade pumpkin pie always bubble over and every time I say I’m going to lay foil underneath and always forget.

  52. Worst thing for me to clean up after is homemade pizza and oven fries. Cheese and olive oil. I saw this stove today while appliance browsing and was lusting over BOTH beauty and functionality of this range. Ahhh!!!

  53. My oven turns messy when I grill a flat laying chicken with veggies around it and some of the veggies burn and the juices get stuck to the tray and scrubbing them off is always a challenge!

  54. When I make my pumpkin bread, even if I skimp on the ingredients, it always explodes or overflows in the oven! Stinky, stinky oven.

  55. Chicken Pot Pie measurements are never exactly right and it definitely overflows sometimes!

  56. Any fresh fruit pie seems to destroy my oven…no matter what I do to try to prevent drips!

  57. oooh – so many but my grandmother’s capirotada and enchiladas! yummy!
    tvollowitz at aol dot com

  58. The recipe that leaves my oven messy is my enchiladas! I stuff the baking dishes full and use lots of cheese and sauce which, even if I cover them, tends to bubble and slosh over the edge when I pull them out 🙂

  59. Cheese enchiladas, my family loves them but the cheese and sauce splatters all over the oven making a big mess for me to clean up.

  60. My wonderful lasagna leaves my oven a total mess! It’s worth or maybe I need a bigger pan.

  61. I have a few questions about this recipe… First off, in the directions for the ziti part (numbers 11, 14-15, and 17) exactly WHICH sauce are you talking about? The tomato sauce that you buy in cans or the tomato sauce that you’ve included in this recipe for the baked ziti? Is this the 4 cups of sauce that we need for the baked ziti part? And second, when exactly do you pour in the pasta? Because in number 16 you only mention pasta mixture.

    1. Sorry for the misunderstanding Mimi! I’ve tweaked the recipe. You can either make the sauce in the recipe or use jarred sauce – your choice – 4 cups. I’ve adjusted the recipe for cooking the ziti and when to add it into the recipe – cheers!

      1. Wow, did not think I was going to get that fast of a reply especially with all these comments. Thank you so much!!

  62. My husband having to cook pizza directly on the rack…need I say more! Wow, what dream this oven would be compared to my current cute little 1956 wall oven!

  63. Anything I cook seems to make a huge mess – so my husband would be so happy if we had an easy clean double oven! We could make ribs and pies, or turkey and pies, or just about anything and pies!

  64. Well, I immediately thought of my favorite dessert — Derby Pie. Somehow it always seems to run over, no matter how much I put in the pie pan. Thanks to this blog and links to blogs with recipes of messy meals, I want to try the Low Fat Best Baked Ziti recipe on this page and the Sunday morning candy bacon on Jennifer Rizzo’s page. I can’t wait to try them in a self-cleaning oven. To date, I am the “self” in the “self-cleaning oven” at my house.

  65. Great giveaway Kelly! I really need that new oven – starting my kitchen remodel!!! The thing that always makes a mess in my oven – bubbled over apple pie!

  66. My favorite recipe that leaves my oven messy is the meatball red sauce pasta bake. Your low fat baked ziti looks scrumptious too. Can’t wait to try.

    amy [at] utyr [dot] it

  67. Looks yummy!
    My lasagna recipe ALWAYS leaves a mess on my counters, oven, kids and the pan too!

  68. I seem to leave remnants of all my baking on the bottom of my oven (which is self cleaning but I haven’t tested that feature for 5 years) I think the worst is apple pie with the delicious filling oozing out and making an awful mess. Would love to have an LG double oven!

  69. my husbands homemade loaded pasta dish always leaves the stove an unreal mess. Thanks for the chance to win.

  70. Since I’m realtively new to the baking scene, I haven’t had much in the way of mishaps, but I can tell you that making ice cream cupcakes can get really messy when they tip over!

  71. Cherry pie always seems to bubble over and make a mess, but I’m going to make it this week anyway.

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