Italian-American cooking is its own cuisine, built by immigrant families with American ingredients and a lot of tomato sauce. These are the dishes that share a table with pizza — baked ziti, spaghetti and meatballs, garlic knots — written for home kitchens and for feeding a crowd.
Each recipe covers make-ahead, freezing and reheating, plus the food-safety temperatures that matter for meat and leftovers.
Pizzeria-style garlic knots from cold-fermented NY pizza dough: portioned by weight, tied loosely, baked at 425°F and tossed hot in garlic butter. Store-bought dough works too.
A saucy 9x13 baked ziti with ricotta, low-moisture mozzarella and optional sausage, plus how to keep it from drying out, make it ahead and freeze it.
Italian-American spaghetti and meatballs for 6: a milk-soaked bread panade, beef and pork, a gentle simmer in whole-tomato sauce, and how to freeze the meatballs raw or cooked.
