- 6
- 5 mins
- 35 mins
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound ground sirloin
- 1 Italian sausage link, removed from the casing
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 15 ounce can tomato sauce
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1 cup ricotta
- 8 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into 6 slices and then halved
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1 1/2 pounds store-bought or homemade pizza dough
Preparation
Step 1
, and I’m so excited to be back with another great recipe to share with you guys. When people find out I love to cook and have a food blog, their first question is almost always, “What’s your favorite food to cook?” or “What’s your specialty?” Oftentimes, I’m plagued for an answer, because, well, I love to cook EVERYTHING. And as much as I’d love to give a confident response, asking me to pick a favorite food to cook is like asking me to choose my favorite pair of shoes or favorite bag, I just can’t do it. My camel booties look super cute with black jeans, my sparkly wedding shoes make me feel like a princess and my black leather flats are
What I love about Italian cooking is its relatively simple and approachable attitude. Most dishes have few ingredients and an absence of long cooking processes you may find in other cuisines. I mean, boil a pot of spaghetti, toss it with a little bit of olive oil, red pepper flakes, bread crumbs and grated parmesan and you have yourself a gourmet meal that anyone can throw together and appreciate.
Personally, I love making lasagna, but let’s be honest, sometimes I just do not have the patience to boil the noodles, separate the noodles, make sure the noodles don’t stick together, make the meat sauce, make the béchamel, make the ricotta filling, spend an hour layering each component ever so perfectly on top of the other and then bake it off for another hour.
A quick meat sauce is thrown together by browning up some lean ground sirloin and Italian sausage, and then simmered for a few minutes in tomato sauce, a little sugar and Italian seasoning. Once it has cooled down a bit, the sauce is tucked into fresh pizza dough along with a little bit of ricotta and lots of fresh mozzarella cheese.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Heat a skillet to a medium-high heat. Add olive oil, and brown sirloin and Italian sausage, breaking up the meat into small pieces as your go.
Once the meat has browned add tomato sauce, sugar, salt and Italian seasoning. Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer, about 7-10 minutes, transfer to a bowl to cool.
In a small bowl mix egg and 1 tablespoon water.
Brush the edges of each piece of dough with egg wash, fold empty half over and seal edges. Make sure to seal edges tightly, you don’t want the cheese or sauce to come out of the sides during cooking, I like to actually roll the edges up a bit to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 10-15 minutes.
this sounds so good. I was wondering how I could make this as a make ahead dinner, so my kids or husband can just cook it for dinner on my late night at school
Hi Traci, I bet you could do a few things, you could partially bake, cool then freeze them wrapped individually in saran and foil and they can pull them out and bake them when needed. Or you could make the filling and keep it in the fridge and let the dough rest in the fridge as well. When ready to make just pull everything out and proceed.
These look awesome! Would you think they could be made a day ahead? Or would the dough go flat? I want to make them ahead for a small family crowd and won’t have time during the day to do them. Could they be made ahead and partly cooked? Suggestions, please?
You could totally make them a day ahead, cook almost completely and then cool, store and reheat the next day!
OMG! I made these today and we all LOVED them!! They were pretty easy to make, ingredients easy to obtain, preparation fairly simple and end duct looked and tasted amazingly delicious! Your directions were easy to follow and my results actually looked just lke yours! Thank you for a new family favorite!
What a great post! That CHEESE. This would make for one happy, comforting dinner.
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