Mexican Manicotti

“I would just like to comment that I find it interesting that this recipe was posted in November, 2001.Inez Willenborg’s wasn’t posted until 4/24/2002, yet hers is a NUMBER 1 rated recipe.Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

“I can’t believe I’ve made this 3 times and didn’t review it. I’,m so sorry! I think I can sum it up with this comment by my hubby: “I think this may be the best Mexican food I’ve ever had.” It’s amazingly good! Thank you!!9/09I just wanted to add this to my previous post. I read one of the other members’ review about using a baby spoon to get the mixture into the manicotti shells. I took a plastic bottle that has a snap on little cap, the ones tht you put ketchup and mustard in for a picnic. I just snipped off a little more of the opening, filled it with the mixture and then just squeezed the mixture into the shell.Hope this helps.”

“DELISH! Of course I played around with it, used leftover T’gving turkey instead of ground beef. Everyone at my house loved this! I let it sit for about an hour before cooking and the pasta was perfect. It was a tiny bit too saucy, so I’ll just cut back on the water next time. Oh, and I used enchilada sauce in place of the picante sauce–it was really, really simple and tasty.”

“I liked this recipe for the most part, the only thing I would tweek is adding more seasoning and maybe using a different sauce besides picante.Also, I use veggie crumblers which is a form of beef.It actually helps for the vegetarians out there.I season it with a taco seasoning, but I do believe that it should get more flavoring the next time I make it.Like someone else said, I use a baby spoon to help with the stuffing of the manicotti noodles.Also, I bake it at a 400 degree temperature for around 30-35 minutes and the sauce helps the noodles to cook well enough that I don’t have to set it in the fridge.That being said, I then add cheese to the top and bake it for another 15.This makes the cook time so much quicker.”

“This was a disappointment for my family. The noodles were too mushy and we thought the beans overwhelmed the meat and spices. If I were to make this again, I would not refrigerate for 8 hours–maybe 2 hours. Also, it was bland–we like a lot of spice. I would add dried onion and green chili for some kick or maybe red pepper flakes. The 3 teaspoons of chili powder was not enough to give it anypunch. Maybe tweaking the spices and cookingal dente manicotti, this would be an improvement.”

“I made this for my son’s B-day dinner on 3/7/08.And instead of using the chili powder and oregano,Recipe#199955 was used. And since I have meat eaters I did use the ground beef.And to make stuffing the shells alot easier, I put the filling in a quart sized zipper bag and snipped off the end.This turned out really good,we all enjoyed it.Thanks for posting and,”Keep Smiling 🙂 “”

“I am not giving a star rating as I didn’t follow the recipe exactly.I used 2 cans of refried beans and no meat, 2 cups of water, only a little more than a cup of sour cream and about 2 cups of monterey jack.I think most surprising was that after sitting in the refrigerator overnight the manicotti shells were really soft and I didn’t think they would hold up through baking but they stayed together fine and we were able to identify the individual manicottis while pulling them out of the pan.This reminded me more of enchiladas than manicotti but they were was great and it was certainly something different!!”

“Good recipe.Very easy since you don’t have to cook the ground beef.Stuffing the shells is a little tedious, but I found that using a baby spoon makes the job a lot easier!Thanks so much for sharing!”

“Love it! There’s just two of us so I made the whole recipe and froze half after step 3. I might try reducing the water, because the batch that I made the next day was really sloppy/runny. I did follow Reelani’s advice and added some spices (chile powder and cumin) to my sauce. I did not make them with meat. And just for reference- it’s a little time consuming to fill those uncooked pasta shells; it is definitely easier if you use a little condiment spoon or narrow spatula.”

“This was great, and easy to make since you don’t cook the pasta first! It’s the first manicotti recipe I’ve found that is easy to stuff! I froze mine and then cooked it later – turned out great!My DH gobbled it up. Thank you!”

“I’m going with 4 stars on this, since the folks at the potluck I took it to really seemed to enjoy it.For myself I’d need to work on the seasonings a bit and find something that tastes better to me.But it was certainly easy to make, and it baked up very nicely.”