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And just like that, it’s the day after Christmas!
I can’t believe it has come and gone, but I’m excited to have a laid back week ahead of us! I hope you guys all had an amazing Christmas. I want to hear all about it, and tell you all about what the Gerard family has been up to the last few days, but first, I need to tell you all about this incredible pasta dish. So much to share!!
This Million Dollar Spaghetti, is one of my favorite meals to make when feeding a lot of people. Especially when a lot of those people are hungry brothers and friends. For everyone who loves, cheesy, meaty, pasta, this is your dish. It’s SO easy to prepare, full of spaghetti, spicy Italian sausage and cheese. Better known as a major winner food combo!
I actually served this dish up last week, but I am posting it today in hopes that it will be a great easy dinner for you guys to make for your family and friends this week.
We had a great week, but sadly some of my family members are headed out today (Abby is headed all the way to India!). But with some leaving, more will be coming, so large amounts of food will still be in high demand. To quickly recap the last few days around here, we started the Christmas fun a little early on Thursday and did a family snowmobile trip up on Vail Pass over to the little town of Red Cliff. It was pretty spur of the moment, but I am so glad that we ALL got to go. Every single immediate Gerard family member was in tow (meaning all nine of us including mom and dad) plus my two cousins, Maggie and Abby, Brendan and Malachi’s girlfriends, Lyndsie and Caitlin, and Kai’s friend Kyle who, one made the trip happen thanks to his four snowmobiles, and two, is basically just another family member at this point. So a grand total of fourteen people…on five snowmobiles. Don’t even ask how we made that happen (think snowboarders literally in tow), but we did… and it was awesome!
We finished the night off with family bowling. Yeah, family bowling, because that’s what you do at night in a ski town…
Friday was pretty mellow, Christmas Eve had a few last minute shopping trips in the morning with gingerbread house making in the afternoon. Christmas Day was spent opening gifts, lounging around, a family hike, making a few Bloody Marys and of course, cooking! Nothing fancy, but pretty perfect in my mind. So how was everyone else’s Christmas?
Now that my cousins have left, the next group is headed our way, which should be interesting, as some of them have never seen snow before. Bren’s girlfriend Lyndsie has her entire family coming in tomorrow and staying through New Years until the third, so my parents are going to have a very full house.
I have no idea what I am cooking up this week, still trying to recover from the weekend of mad cooking and cocktail making, but I’m sure there will be lots. Since Lyn’s family has yet to try this million dollar spaghetti casserole, odds are that I will be making it sometime this week.
I like to think of this dish as a very easy, deconstructed lasagna. It has all the same flavors of a classic lasagna, but minus all the cooking steps, layers, and time, YES! I guess that’s why we call it million dollar spaghetti, huh? Tastes like a million bucks, but it really is easy, and also pretty cheap to make…but don’t tell your guest that, DUH. 🙂
The one major way this dish varies from lasagna however, is that the spaghetti noodles on the bottom of this dish is treated like spaghetti carbonara. Before you bake it, you toss it with eggs to create a rich and creamy sauce. It’s fantastic and sets the dish apart from just another spaghetti recipe.
Trust me, this is not your grandma’s spaghetti bake!
Million Dollar Spaghetti.
Servings: 8 servings
Calories Per Serving: 638 kcal
Nutritional information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed.
Ingredients
- 1 pound spaghetti
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup whole milk cottage cheese
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
- 1 pound ground spicy Italian sausage
- 3 cups marinara sauce, homemade or store-bought
- 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat and boil the pasta until al dente according to package directions.
- Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, parsley and Parmesan. Drain the spaghetti, and add it right back to the hot pot. Add the butter and the egg mixture to the spaghetti, and quickly toss until evenly coated and the eggs have formed a sauce. Add the cottage cheese and cream cheese and toss until combined. Transfer the mixture to the baking dish.
- Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and brown all over, about 5 to 8 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the marinara sauce. Spread mixture over the spaghetti. Add the mozzarella cheese in an even layer over top.
- Transfer the baking dish to the oven and bake 30 to 45 minutes or until the cheese has melted and is lightly browned on top. Cool 5 minutes before serving. Serve with parmesan and basil, if desired.
Everyone’s gonna eat it all up.
This post was originally published on December 26, 2016
Wow Tieghan! This one looks crazy good! Absolutely the perfect comfort food dish for a cold night!
Thats exactly when I made this! So happy you like this Mary Ann!
Ohhh wow, that stringy cheese is enough to make anyone drool. Looks fantastic!
Thank you so much! SO happy you like them!
Hmm this looks delish!
x Annabelle
travelsandtea.com
Thanks a bunch Annabelle!
This is so perfect for a cold evening, and our boys would love it I’m sure!
Thank you! I hope you guys love it!
Good lord Tieghan, this looks like the greatest spaghetti ever!
Awh Matt, thank you so much! So happy you like it!
This was everything I wanted on a cold December day – easy, delicious, comfort food. So good! TX.
Yes! Perfect comfort food for a cold day! I hope you love this Kaylee!
Cottage cheese? No, no no! Always ricotta cheese.
Go ahead and use ricotta! Hope you love it Shannon! (:
This is like all I ever wanted as a child. I love how you toss eggs with the pasta before you bake it. So rich. Hey, what’s your favorite store bought pasta sauce? I am so over cooking at the moment. At least until New Years. And then it’s bacon wrapped scallops and ricotta stuffed crepes.
Hey Stacy! I like DeLallo brand Marinara sauce, it is great! Thank you!
It looks as though I may be the first to actually cook this. You are so talented!!! My local butcher didn’t have his usual hand-made picante sausage, so I used a brand-name normal sausage. While still excellent, the extra flavor was missing. Next time, we’ll enjoy it even more. Btw, I cut the recipe in half and it was plenty for three people.
P.S. Thanks for the cream cheese instead of mascarpone! Less fat. Didn’t feel stuffed.
P.S.S. Fabio is Italian? And misspelled mascarpone?
I’ve been making this for many years – basically lasagna with spaghetti noodles. I was too lazy to do a full lasagna one day so I did the next best (EASIER) thing. I also add garlic powder, onion powder & basil to the cottage cheese mix. If using beef or turkey instead of sausage, I also add some crushed red pepper to the cheese mix. (I also omit the butter and only use 2 eggs usually and it still sets nicely)
I am so glad this turned out great and you enjoyed it David! Thank you!
Good morning T. Looking good.
I should have read this before i went to the city.. Of course now not all the ingredients in the Fridge. Drove to town in -7 deg weather and made it back before the next big snow fall..hit..
Oh well we shall eat it in early days of 2017.
I would think Zita might be good also..
Thank you for the past year of Yummy, intriguing recipes,.
Your page is about the first web page i visit every morning..( except yesterday..) as i headed to the cities at 7 AM.
Thank you again.. Have a great Tuesday.
Hey Leslie! Thank you so much, I am so glad you have been enjoying my recipes! Also, I am really glad you made it back home before the snow!! Have a great day and an awesome New Year!!
So lasagna with spaghetti? Sounds fun.
Thank you Mike!
I’ve been thinking about noodles because it’s supposed to be good luck to eat them for New Years’. I can’t decide between Italian or Thai…. Seriously, your family is so lucky to have you!! Your positivity is delightful and your photos are fantastic.
There is a reason Italians hate it when non-Italians try to cook this stuff. You have ingredient fails.
1. Marscapone, not cream cheese. Not a big deal but still.
2. Ricotta, not cottage cheese. This is serious
3. Jar of sauce. No, No, No, NOOOOO. Make your own or go to McDonalds.
You have design fails. You admit that this is a rip on lasagna but fail to see that any casserole style dish needs a short noodle or sheet noodle. Spaghetti is meant to compliment lighter flavors like EVOO and some parm. The noodle will struggle to stand up to a pound of cheese and sausage flavors. It is also never to be broken.
You have technique fails. This spaghetti is mush (offensive to italians) by the time you pull it. Use a very hearty rigatoni cook it halfway and then bake it. Drain the sasuage as well since the grease can ruin the delicate cheese flavors.
Sorry to be so harsh but it is just so easy to do it the right way. Your blog is very well run and you take fantastic photos.
Hi Fabio,
No where in this post did I try to claim this as traditional Italian food. I just made something for my family that they loved and shared here on MY blog. We love this recipe and really don’t care that it’s not traditional. This is a food blog and I share recipes that I have created, not recipes that have already been created. Also, as you can see I gave the option to use store bought or homemade marinara sauce. I live by the rule that my mom always taught me, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. Hope up you had a Merry Christmas.
“I live by the rule that my mom always taught me, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. Hope up you had a Merry Christmas.”
Sorry if you had an Unhappy Christmas, why should you blast someone for their own preferences. Taste is subjective, I didn’t notice you being criticized for how sad your grilled cheese sandwich was or that you only cut the crust off of one side of your PBJ!!
Lighten up and enjoy this recipe, I am sure others would be happy to judge any of your “Family Creations” in a heartbeat. As for me, I am getting the ingredients together tomorrow to try this, and I may tweak this a little and use Ricotta instead if that is okay with you???? If you have no other need for us, then please post one of your favorite recipes and get it hacked apart by those whom should know better!
I hope you have a splendid New Year’s and maybe I should work on a resolution or three??
Good advice scott. Yes, I am going to bite my tongue and instead say, this is the BEST MillionDollarSpaghetti I have EVER tasted! Everyone puts their own spin on Italian, Mexican, Chinese etc… Tieghan puts the best spin on everything on her site. Just love her cooking and her photograghs.
We can’t really get behind any homemade sauce for this, pound for pound.
Cottage cheese and jar marinara , million dollar….. doubt it. Might try riotta and a little home made saucd…. maybe.
Sounds great! As you can see, I have linked to my homemade marinara sauce. Hope you had a Merry Christmas.