Five cheese tortellini with meatballs and meat sauce/Gin Lee

Five cheese tortellini with meatballs and meat sauce

If you're a fan of ravioli, this five cheese tortellini recipe will be just as satisfying to you.

Five cheese tortellini with meatballs and meat sauce//Gin Lee

Ingredients:

• 1-12-ounce package of four cheese tortellini
• 1 jar of four cheese pasta sauce (any brand is fine)
• 1 cup of shredded cheese (I used white American garlic cheese)
• 1 pound of ground beef
• 1 bag of Italian meatballs
• 1 onion finely diced
• 4 cloves of minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon of basil
• 2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon of seasoning salt

Tortellini pasta uncooked/Gin Lee

Instructions:

In a pan, add the tortellini to four quarts of boiling water. Cook for about twelve minutes. Drain the water off the pasta in a colander. Set aside.

Brown the ground beef in a skillet, drain the grease off. Set aside. Now, add the meat back to the skillet and add the diced onion, minced garlic, and seasonings; combine well. Cook until the bits of onion are translucent. Then add the jar of pasta sauce and stir.

Heat the Italian meatballs up in a microwave-safe dish for about one minute.

Tortellini pasta cooked with meat sauce added/Gin Lee

Next, in a 9x13 casserole dish, add the tortellini and meat sauce together, stir well. Add the Italian meatballs on top, then sprinkle the shredded cheese all over the top.

Tortellini pasta cooked with meatballs in a meat sauce/Gin Lee

Transfer the tortellini to the oven and bake for ten extra minutes or long enough to melt the cheese. Then serve and enjoy!

Notes:

You can use homemade four cheese pasta sauce if you prefer.

I stayed true to the four cheese blends of ricotta, swiss, romano and grated parmesan that are stuffed inside the tortellini. So I opted to use a four cheese pasta sauce with those same cheeses included in. The shredded garlic cheese is then added as the fifth cheese during the last ten minutes of cooking.

The Italian meatballs can also be left out of the tortellini dish and the tortellini will be equally satisfying since the pasta is already in a meat sauce.