These beautiful shells are my favorite make-ahead company dish. The recipe makes enough for your freezer so that you can have them for company at least twice. They are a little bit of effort, but it is fun to make them, and since you can do it ahead of time, the extra effort doesn't seem like so much.
This is the before the freezer picture.
When making the filling, I like to use the frozen, loose, cut leaf spinach. You don't have to thaw it and squeeze it--which I don't like to do.
The Italian sausage must be removed from it's casing.
The sausage is browned with ground beef. You may substitute ground turkey for the beef if you prefer.
Stir in the onion to cook, then drain everything on a paper towel.
The cooked meat, spinach, and cheese mixture are stirred together. This is the stuffing for the pasta.
Cook the jumbo shells for about 2 minutes less than what is called for on the package. Rinse the pasta to stop the cooking. These are very easy to stuff.
To freeze, spread the stuffed shells out on a couple trays and put the whole tray, uncovered, in the freezer.
When shells are hard and frozen, place them in zipper-lock baggies, seal, label, and put back in the freezer till needed.
To serve, put spaghetti sauce in bottom of baking dish, and lay frozen shells on top. Cover dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes. When they are hot, put mozzarella cheese on top each shell, and put back in oven until cheese is melted. Place a spoon of hot spaghetti sauce on each plate, and carefully place 3 shells per serving on top the sauce. Spoon just a bit of extra sauce on the tops.
It had been a couple years since I had made these...and when I served them last week David asked, "Do I have to wait that long again?" He really likes this dish. I served these to my visiting granddaughter, Lillian, tonight and she said, "This is tasty pasta, Grandmother, can I have another one?"
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