It's Super Bowl season and every NFL fan around the country are looking to get a party going. Now, there are some people wanting to do chicken wings, pizza or anything that they want to have for their guests, but what I like to do when it's the Super Bowl is that I love to make food from scratch.

One of my favorite food for sports games is Italian food and while lasagna is a great option to serve your guests, making a pasta dish is the best option because it's served from a baking dish, and it's hot at the ready.

The pasta dish I'm talking about is Baked Rigatoni, but it's my personal version on how it's made, so let me give you my recipe and if you try to cook it, let me know how it went and I will reply as soon as we can.

With that being said, let's get started, shall we?

Extra virgin olive oil

Rigatoni Pasta

Crushed Tomatoes

Half of White Onion (diced)

Minced Garlic (3 cloves, or you can use jarred minced garlic, but mincing garlic yourself will have the best results)

Basil

Oregano

Fennel seed powder

Red Chili Pepper Flakes

Tomato Paste

Crushed Tomatoes

Ground Beef

Ground Pork

Ricotta Cheese

Parmigiano Cheese (grated)

Buffalo Mozzarella Cheese

Provolone Cheese

Pecorino Romano

Kosher Salt

Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Rigatoni:

1. Fill a pot with warm water and season it aggressively with salt (almost as salty as the ocean).
2. Once the water is boiling add in the rigatoni and make sure to stir occasionally to keep the pasta from sticking to the pot.
3. After 12 minutes, 3 minutes under the package's instructions (to keep it from being Al Dente since it will be completely cooked after some time in the oven) drain the rigatoni into a colander, but after adding the rigatoni in the colander, add a small block of unsalted butter to keep the pasta from sticking together.

Tip: The pasta I highly recommend to cook when making Italian dinner is La Molisana. La Molisana is a really great brand of pasta because they use the right ingredients and one of the main ingredients is drum wheat semolina, which is a milling flour that's used for making pasta. They use that as well as eggs that are also milled and used to mix the flour until they have a white consistency that you want to have in your pasta dinner. If you haven't tried La Molisana, then I recommend you do, it's fantastic.

Sauce:

1. In a Dutch oven, add a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil on a medium high heat.
2. Once there's smoke coming out of the pot, add the ground beef and ground pork, sear on both sides, and break it up into very small chunks with a wooden utensil as it cooks.
3. Take it out in a colander and set it aside before adding a little more oil if needed.
4. Add in the onion first and stir it around until it becomes a golden brown and it's translucent.
5. Add in the minced garlic and stir it up until you smell the aroma and it also becomes a golden brown.
6. Add in the basil, oregano, fennel seed powder, chili flakes, and stir it all around until you add the tomato paste.
7. Stir occasionally until the paste caramelizes, and then add in one 28 oz can of crushed (any brand) tomatoes before stirring again.
8. Add in the meat, stir a couple more times before adding salt and pepper to taste, and stir occasionally for 10 to 15 minutes until it's hot and thickened before adding your rigatoni and stirring again until the pasta all covered from the sauce.

Tip: Don't use jarred sauce ever again. Jarred sauce was great as we grew up but now it's just tasteless and not as delicious as we thought it would be. Making the sauce from scratch is the best way because it's more flavorful and it has that thickness that you're looking for in a pasta dish.

Cheeses:

1. Grate one block of parmigiano until it's very finely grated.
2. Take the ricotta out of the tub and into a bowl, season with salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, one whole egg, stir around until it's smooth and humongous.
3. Dice a block of provolone in smaller pieces.
4. Shred one block of Pecorino cheese into small sized shreds.
5. Add the parmigiano and pecorino into a bowl, and stir the cheeses with your hands until they're all mixed together.

Tip: The reason you need to use the blocks of cheeses is because the pre-shredded cheeses have this powder or whatever to keep the shreds from sticking together, which is what you don't want in your Italian food. Shredding cheese yourself will be tiring and you will be sore after a while, but it will be worth it because you will have the best results from shredding a whole block of cheese yourself as it will be your greatest achievement.

Assemble:

1. In a baking dish, grease it up with olive oil spray.
2. Add the rigatoni and sauce to the dish and spread it out.
3. Sprinkle the cheese mixture around.
4. Break the Buffalo mozzarella into pieces, spread it out with the provolone, and the ricotta mixture.
5. Add the rigatoni again and repeat the same process.
6. Put the dish in a 375°F oven and let it cook for 30 to 35 minutes uncovered or until stunning.
7. Cut and serve.

Bon Appetite!