This was healthy kale baked manicotti was awesome and I enjoyed eating it, although the kale was a deal-breaker for my kindergartener. I thought the kale added just the right touch to balance out the creamy cheese, and kale also adds tons of vitamins, minerals and fiber to the dish.
Low-fat cottage cheese is absolutely amazing in any kind of “baked cheese” recipe. It’s fantastic in a lasagna, inside stuffed shells, in a mac’n’cheese, or just melted on top of pasta. This is one of the best calorie-saving low fat cheese hacks I know of — totally delicious, you will not even notice the missing fat.
Feel free to substitute spinach, collard greens, chard, or any other dark leafy greens. I happened to have kale on hand, so that’s what I used.
Cheese and tomato sauce are salty enough by themselves, so there’s no need to add any extra salt.
I decided to thin out the tomato sauce with a cup of water for two reasons: 1) I wanted a runny, easily-pourable sauce 2) my husband gets heartburn if he eats too much acid too late at night. I suppose you could also make the sauce using two 8-ounce cans of tomato sauce instead of doing 50/50 tomato sauce and water like I did.
Creamy Kale Baked Manicotti
Ingredients
- 1 pound manicotti noodles
- 1 pound kale (chopped, tough stems removed)
- 2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 4 ounces cream cheese
- 1 cup cottage cheese
- 3 ounces mozzarella cheese (divided use)
Sauce
- 1 8oz can low sodium tomato sauce
- 1 cup water
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon basil
- ½ teaspoon oregano
Instructions
- The sauce can be made ahead of time and set aside: Heat 1 8-ounce can of low sodium sauce and 1 cup of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the garlic powder, basil and oregano. Turn the heat up to medium-high, then turn the heat down to low and let the sauce simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 °F and lightly spray a 9×13-inch baking dish with nonstick spray.
- Boil a big pot of water, and cook the manicotti noodles according to package instructions. When the manicotti noodles are done cooking, transfer them to a plate to cool off.
- While the noodles are cooking, spritz a skillet or large saucepan with nonstick spray. Add the chopped kale to the skillet and cook over medium heat until it starts to wilt. Sprinkle in 2 teaspoons of garlic powder and give it a good stir.
- Set the kale aside to cool.
- In a small bowl, stir together the cream cheese, cottage cheese, and 2 ounces of the mozzarella cheese.
- Stir the kale mixture into the cheese mixture.
- When the manicotti noodles are cool enough to handle, stuff them with the kale/cheese mixture.
- Arrange the stuffed manicotti in the prepared baking dish. Pour the sauce evenly over the manicotti noodles. Sprinkle the remaining 1 ounce of mozzarella cheese on top.
- Bake for 25 minutes. There's no need to cover the baking dish with foil, or anything like that.
