This is a spin on a classic dish my kiddos love! It’s also a perfect dish to have your kids help with. They can help stir in the sauce, spin the noodles if they’re old enough and then any age can help sprinkle cheese on top.
When cooking the meat, this is also a good opportunity to add in extra veggies if you’d like to pack them up with healthy nutrients. You can also leave out the meat and just use veggies to keep the dish vegetarian.
This is a perfect weeknight meal. It’s simple and doesn’t use a lot of dishes. Easy clean up is my kinda dinner. And meal prepping!! This is a great make ahead dish so you can reheat them throughout the week. I fill 12 muffins tins and then have leftover spaghetti to put into a dish in the fridge. I’ll eat that for lunch or something later in the week OR you can make more cups!
Tip: I spray cooking spray on the muffin tin so the spaghetti doesn’t stick. The cheese is like a glue once baked so I like to use cooking spray and then a small spatula to wiggle them out.
Spaghetti Cups
Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: 20 minutes | Total time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 lb of ground beef
- 45 oz of tomato sauce (you can use Ragu, homemade, or whatever kind you prefer. I like to use the tomato, garlic Ragu sauce)
- spaghetti noodles (regular, whole grain, gluten free, whatever you like)
- 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (I like a farmhouse shredded style because it’s thicker)
Recipe
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. In a large saucepan on medium heat, cook the ground beef until it’s not longer brown. This is also the time to add in veggies to sauté if you’re using those.
- While that’s cooking, in a large pot, boil your noodles and once done, drain.
- Pour in the tomato sauce and stir it all up. Let it simmer on medium low for a few minutes.
- In a large bowl, mix the noodles, beef mixture and 2 cups of cheese together. This is to make the cups! See? So easy.
- Grab your muffin tin and spray it with cooking spray.
- Now to make the cups, you’ll want to spin the noodles and then place them in the cup. Here’s how you do that: grab a large spoon and a fork. Scoop a nice large spoon full of spaghetti onto your spoon and then use the fork to spin spin spin! Once it’s all spun into a circle, shimmy it into the muffin tin. The cheese will be a little melty so you’ll have to use your spoon to kinda of push it off the fork. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
- Using the remaining 2 cups of mozzarella cheese, sprinkle the top of each cup.
- Bake them in your preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is nice and bubbly.
XO, Rachel