Here’s the thing. I make a dang good lasagna.
Like amazingly good.
I spend a lot of time and effort when I make it and it is DELICIOUS. Both my four-cheese and my seafood lasagna.
So if people are eating something I make and they liken it to lasagna, even if they say it is okay as lasagna, I want it to be an actual lasagna that I made.
NOT a manicotti from the slow cooker that just ended up looking and tasting like lasagna.
Because I can make a better lasagna than that. A prettier, tastier lasagna.
I’ve totally done it before. In this column no less!
But I suppose I digress.
I’ll move on.
This recipe was for Crockpot No-Bake Manicotti. I like manicotti, and I like the Crockpot, so it seemed like a reasonable recipe to try. PLUS it was something new and different, at least as far as pastas I have made goes. And I do so enjoy trying things that are new and different.
The ingredients list was pretty simple. Ground beef, spaghetti sauce (I got two cans – Zesty and Four Cheese – of the cheap Hunt’s stuff because I figured it was getting mixed with a bunch of other things so it would be fine), diced tomatoes (I forgot those actually), manicotti shells (I bought big shell-shaped pasta as well cause I wasn’t sure how the manicotti shells would fit in the Crockpot and I knew we were having a large group of people to dinner and wanted to make sure there was enough food to go around), and mozzarella cheese made up the non-filling items.
Cottage cheese, more mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning (yeah I didn’t have any of that), salt, and pepper made up the filling ingredients list. And mixed together they were actually pretty good. I know because I got that mixture all over my hands while trying to stuff it in the manicotti shells, and since it was on my hands I went ahead and gave it a taste test.
It took twice as long as it should have to get the shells filled. Cheese ended up EVERYWHERE but I thought it was a halfway decent job by the time I finished. Once all the shells were filled I topped it all off with sauce, closed up the slow cooker, and set it for four hours. The cook time on the recipe was two and a half hours, but I figured it would be done in two as my Crockpot tends to cook fast.
And I was right on the timing. In two hours the shells were softened up, the cheese was melted, and the finished dish was …
Lasagna.
Pretty much.
While cooking the shells had collapsed or come apart or something because they’d flattened out like lasagna noodles instead of retaining their manicotti shape.
And with all the sauce and cheese on top and the collapsed shells inside, basically what I ended up with was slow cooker lasagna.
It was tasty enough, and everyone attending FamilyDinner seemed to like it.
But …
But.
I hadn’t intended to make lasagna. I wanted manicotti. And I was pretty bummed that I did not get the manicotti I was hoping for. I don’t think I can call this recipe a WIN, because it didn’t turn out at all the way I thought it was going to. I won’t call it a fail either, as it was totally edible and people liked it.
So I’m going with a ‘meh’ and hoping that next time things will work out they way they are supposed to.
SOURCE – crockpot no-boil manicotti
