Manicotti is a comforting classic Italian dish made with tube shaped pasta stuffed with a ricotta cheese mixture and baked in homemade marinara sauce with extra cheese on top.
Preheat a Dutch oven over medium heat and add olive oil. Saute diced onions, carrots, and garlic first until softened. Add canned tomatoes, bay leaves, oregano, sugar, and salt.
Stir well, cover with a lid but leave a crack for steam to escape. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add basil, stir, and cook for another 20 minutes or so.
Take out and discard bay leaves and blend sauce in the blender until smooth. (Make sure to open the little tab so the steam can escape while blending.)
NOTE: you may have about a cup of sauce leftover. Store it in a glass container with a lid, in the refrigerator.
Manicotti Pasta Shells:
Bring a pot of water to boil and salt it. Cook pasta in salted boiling water for 6 minutes, drain off water, and set pasta shells aside on a clean cutting board to cool down.
Manicotti Filling:
Spread about a cup and a half of marinara sauce in the bottom of the baking dish. Set aside.
Combine all ingredients for the stuffing in a mixing bowl and mix until evenly incorporated.
Transfer prepared stuffing into a large piping bag (I use 16 oz piping bag.) Tie the opening of the bag with a produce rubber band and cut off the tip when ready to stuff pasta tubes.
Hold manicotti shell in one hand and squeeze the stuffing into it from the piping bag, filling it almost full. Don’t overfill though or a lot of it will come out while baking.
Nestle stuffed manicotti in the sauce. Repeat with all the manicotti pasta shells.
Spread more marinara sauce over the top of all the filled manicotti.
Spread mozzarella and Parmesan cheese over the top.
Baking Manicotti:
Preheat the oven to 350° and lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish.
Spray one side of foil with non-stick cooking spray, the side that will be facing down, so that the cheese doesn’t stick to the foil. Cover the baking dish tightly with foil.
Bake for about 30 minutes. Take off the foil and bake another 10 minutes.
Video
Notes
Pasta Sauce: while it’s always best to use homemade marinara sauce, you can also use your favorite store-bought one to save time when needed.
Make Ahead: Follow all the steps of preparing manicotti up to the baking but instead of baking, place the covered baking pan into the refrigerator. To bake it the next day, preheat the oven to 350°F and let the pan warm up a little on the counter while the oven is preheating. Bake for about 40 minutes with foil on top, take off the foil, and bake for another 10 minutes.
Storing, Reheating, and Freezing: there are instructions to store, reheat, and freeze the manicotti in the body of this post. Please see the post for the information!