This gnocchi with ricotta meat sauce the sauce and meat are going to give us 2 additional dinners later on. I prob spent about $12 on all the ingredients including the bread, (I got some Laura's lean ground beef that was about to expire at a steal! Even bought some extra to freeze) but I already had sauce and the gnocchi at home so that's not included.
What you need:
1 lb of Italian sausage (you can use mild of hot)
1 lb of lean ground beef
1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons of ricotta cheese
1 jar or 2.5 cups tomato sauce
Gnocchi or pasta of your choice
Ground sausage and ground beef together. One cooked drain, and split in half as you only need a full pound for the sauce. Set the other half aside or you can split your meat before cooking and freeze and save for later.
I make my own tomato sauce ( well sorta) I buy the cans of organic tomato sauce comes in a 12 pack from Costco and then I make big batches at a time with seasonings etc... and freeze. I had a big container in my fridge I had just made for some pizzas and had froze yet so I used that. I measured 2.5 cups of sauce and added it to the pan with the meat.
One that started to cook and warm I added a 1/4 cup of ricotta and decided it wasn't enough so added 2 additional tablespoons. Let that all warm up and sauce was done.
The gnocchi only takes 2-3 min to cook so I stared that and then drained and served. This was a while wheat gnocchi we had found at a place called Southern Seasons a while back and hadn't made yet, wasn't sure how it would be but it was really good!
After you palace gnocchi in the bowl top with sauce and dinner is ready!
The sauce did get a little thick and we had more than half left so we put in fridge to top pasta another night this week for dinner. We rarely make pasta but momma has been craving the carbs! More than likely we will put over a spaghetti squash.
As for the remainder of the meat I mixed with the ricotta cheese and some Italian blend cheese for manicotti filling and placed in the freezer. I've had a box of manicotti noodles in the pantry staring at me for a while now and this is half my usually recipe for it so it worked out perfect and I'll make it for dinner soon!
Hope you enjoy!
