Sauce Magnusson

Why spend the effort to squeeze pasta sauce into tediously tiny cannelloni noodles, you ask? It’s messy, takes extra time and essentially, cannelloni is the same as spaghetti! It’s true that you probably wouldn’t want to take the extra time to make cannelloni on a weekday, wasting some of your precious evening free time spooning pasta sauce into overly fat noodles, but once-in-a-while, you deserve to make yourself a treat! Think of that delicious, slightly burnt, baked pasta taste… Delicious! Plus why else would people all around the world take the effort to stuff food into starches, let it be cannelloni in Italia, dumplings in China, or pierogy in Kraków, everyone in the world loves to wrap starch around ground meat with seasonings! In reality, it’s not so much extra work, either!  Around 12 cannelloni noodles can feed 4 people (or two people for two lunches, for our other power-couples out there!). Each cannelloni stuffing procedure, really only takes at most a minute, so as long as you’re not squeamish about getting a little messy, it’s only a little added work!

Here’s the recipe:

~0.5 kg (1 lbs.) of hamburger

~200 g (~1/2 lbs.) of shredded cheese, mozzarella, parmesan etc.

1 medium onion

½  teaspoon dried basil

½ teaspoon salt

2 garlic cloves

900 g of pasta sauce (~2 15 oz cans)

1 box of cannelloni, ~ 250 g, 24 total (you won’t use them all) – try to find the bake only option, so you don’t have to pre-boil them

Here's a short video I made of my wife doing the process:

What you need to do is actually a simple procedure, of first making the pasta sauce—we went with a simple ground beef-tomato sauce recipe. What you do is chop the onions and garlic, then sauté them, using the same large pot for everything (less pots to wash dudes!!!). Then, once the onions and garlic are slightly soft, you add your ground beef, browning it. Once it’s browned, drain the excess liquid (cause who spends the money on low-fat, quality beef, am I right??) and add ~half of your pasta sauce. The other half will be used to coat your post-stuffed cannoli. You add the salt and dried basil, then cook for a few minutes, stirring properly. This sauce procedure can be used for whatever noodles you want to use if you want to skip the whole cannelloni part, but I recommend forging ever onward!

If you choose to make cannelloni, prepare a baking dish by coating it with the pasta sauce from the can/ jar. You then start filling Cannelloni! The simplest way to do it is by spooning the meat sauce into the cannelloni, making sure the meat meets in the middle (meat meets, you like that right?), otherwise the Cannelloni can burn. Once your complete, you place the Cannelloni in the baking dish—congrats, first done! Carry on until you fill the entire dish with one layer. Multi-layer Cannelloni is dangerous since the noodles can stick together, so I’d recommend a single layer, but your decision. Once the baking dish is full, you can add the left over pasta sauce, coating the noodles thoroughly, which will keep your cannelloni from burning. Then sprinkle your cheese on top of that, and voilà, you’re ready to bake! Bake the dish for ~30 minutes at ~ 200 ^oC (~400 ^oF).  Once done, take out the dish, snap some photos, publish to facebook, and bask in the thumbs up avalanche!

Or you could just eat it. Post your pasta photos to my facebook page too!

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