Recipe: Quick and Easy Cheese Ravioli Bake

I love this recipe.  You can easily modify it for the ingredients you have on hand or make it vegetarian. It also works well with any additional ingredients you’d like to add.

Ingredients:

24 frozen cheese stuffed raviolis
32 oz (4 cups) of your favorite pasta sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (or other shredded cheese)
½ cup parmesan cheese
1 pound cooked ground beef (seasoning of your choice)

Directions:

1. Preheat Oven to 375 degrees.
2. Brown the ground beef in a skillet.  Season with spices of your choice.  I like to add garlic, oregano and basil.
3. Drain beef and set aside
4. In a 9×11 oven-proof pan, pour 1 ⅓ cup of the pasta sauce over the bottom of the pan
5. Arrange 12 of the raviolis over the sauce
6. Next layer ½ of your cheeses over the sauce.  I used shredded cheddar in place of the mozzarela because that’s what I had on hand.  This is also the part were you can get creative.  Try layering black olives, pepperoni, peppers, diced tomatoes or whatever you’d like!
7. Sprinkle cheese (and other add-ins) with ½ of the hamburger.  For a vegetarian dish, just leave out the hamburger and add other goodies suggested above.
8. Layer another 12 ravioli, sauce, cheese, other add-ins and meat as in the previous layer.
9. Place in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes.
10. Remove from oven when bubbly hot and serve!

This dish is a great make ahead meal and freezes and refrigerates well. Leftovers make great next day microwave lunches.