Lasagna is perhaps the quintessential feed-a-crowd casserole. There are of course as many ways to make lasagna as there are Italian mammas, but here is my own method for making it. I was so intimidated by lasagna, before I first tried it! It looked like a process that would eat up my whole day! While that it is not true, it is definitely more time-consuming than spaghetti — but it's oh-so-worth-it, from time to time! So here, just in case you have never made lasagna, is the process in photos.
Ingredients for lasagna.
This recipe is a hybrid of a full-on, totally from scratch lasagna recipe and one that uses pre-made components. I do make my own sauce and cook the meat, but I use dried pasta instead of fresh, homemade pasta. You can definitely make lasagna quicker than this, if you use jarred sauce. But if I am going to the trouble of making a lasagna in the first place, I really like to make my own sauce.
This is a serious lasagna. It's extra-deep (you will need a deep pan!) as well as cheesy, meaty, and really, really chunky with beef and sausage.
What You Need
Ingredients
Pasta
1 pound dried lasagna noodles
Olive oil
Salt
Meat Sauce
1 1/4 pound (1 package) uncooked spicy pork or chicken sausage
1 pound ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
One 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, with their juice
One 12-ounce can tomato paste
One 28-ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Large pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
2 teaspoons salt, divided
Cheese Layer
15 ounces ricotta cheese, drained
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
Small handful fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, minced
4 cups (2 packages) grated mozzarella cheese
Equipment
Extra-deep 13x9-inch baking dish (should be at least 3 inches deep!)
Baking spray or olive oil for greasing the pan
Large pasta pot
Towels for noodles
Colander
Deep sauté pan OR wide saucepan
Medium bowl
Instructions
1. Heat the oven to 425°F and lightly grease the baking pan with olive oil.
2. Place a large pot of water over high heat. Drizzle in a glug of olive oil and salt the water generously.
3. Bring to a boil, add the lasagna noodles, and bring back to a boil. Cook until the lasagna is al dente.
4. Drain and lay the noodles out on clean kitchen towels.
5. Place a large skillet over medium high heat.
6. Cut open the sausage casings (I like to use kitchen shears for this) and crumble the sausage. Crumble in the ground beef, and add all the meat to the skillet.
7. Cook, stirring frequently, until the beef is very well browned.
8. Meanwhile, finely chop the onion and the garlic.
9. Add the chopped onion and garlic to the skillet and turn down the heat to medium. Cook, stirring frequently, for another 10 minutes.
10. Take off the heat and drain most of the fat away from the meat.
11. Place back on the heat, and add the tomato paste. Cook for a couple minutes, stirring it into the meat.
12. Crush the plum tomatoes in the can, and then add them with their juices, as well as the tomato sauce, into the meat. Stir and bring to a simmer. Simmer for at least 15 minutes, while you prepare the cheese layer. When you take the sauce off the heat, stir in 1 teaspoon of salt and some freshly ground black pepper.
13. In a medium bowl, stir together the ricotta, beaten eggs, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, remaining 1 teaspoon of salt, olive oil, and minced parsley in a large bowl.
14. Count your noodles. You will need four layers of noodles total. It is best to start and finish with wider layers, so if you have less than 16 noodles, put your extra noodles in the bottom or top layers. (For the purposes of this recipe, I'll assume you have 15 noodles.) Line the bottom of the prepared baking dish with 4 cooked lasagna noodles, overlapping them.
15. Spread one-third of the ricotta mixture on top.
16. Spread about one-third of the meat sauce on top of that.
17. Sprinkle with about 1 cup of grated mozzarella and top with another 3 noodles. Repeat layering the ricotta and meat sauce with the cheese. Repeat again with 3 noodles and another layer of ricotta, meat, and cheese.
18. Finish by topping the lasagna with 4 noodles — one crosswise and four lengthwise. Sprinkle any remaining mozzarella cheese on top of the noodles, as well as the remaining 1/2 cup of Parmesan. (At this point the lasagna may be covered and refrigerated for up to 48 hours. It may also be securely wrapped and frozen for up to a month.)
19. Cover loosely with aluminum foil.
20. Bake for 30 minutes.
21. Uncover and bake for an additional 10 minutes. for Let stand for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.
Additional Notes:
• This recipe is adapted from my own recipe from my book, Not Your Mother's Casserole Cookbook, which will be published by Harvard Common Press in January 2011.
• This lasagna can be made up to a day ahead, then covered and refrigerated. It can also be frozen, before baking. If you freeze it, let the lasagna thaw overnight in the refrigerator before baking it, then bake as directed above. If you don't have time to let it thaw, reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees, and bake for an additional half an hour, or until the center is steaming hot.
• This recipe feeds 6 to 8 people.
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(Images: Faith Durand)
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YuM! You have really tempting food photography on the kitchn! I will try this soon.
For anyone that likes turkey lasagna, I highly recommend the one from the Barefoot Contessa.
this is making the salad i had planned for dinner look really lame...
Oh yum oh yum oh yum. How I love lasagna. My dad's recipe is, to me, the best ever. Lasagna is one food I *never* order at a restaurant because it does not taste right. But you sure have put the idea to make our family recipe soon.
This looks awesome, but I have to say my absolute favorite lasagna recipe is in the Joy Of Cooking and they call it Lasagna Bolognese. To make it from scratch is a bit of a pain, but if you have bolognese sauce in your freezer it comes together really quickly. Besides the delicious bolognese sauce, it also uses Bechamel sauce (which takes less than 5 minutes to make from flour, butter, and milk) rather than ricotta which really brings the lasagna to a whole new level. Yum yum yum!
I'm a lasagna purist and was skeptical at first, but I will say I've had good luck with the no-boil noodle method. I've gone no-boil using the noodles intended for that treatment (barilla is one brand) or just regular dry lasagne noodles and the addition of a bit of extra liquid in the tomato sauce. Both turn out about 99% as good as the standard version and it cuts down quite a bit on the labor.
Yep -- splatgirl is right -- skip cooking the pasta and you've cut out most of the work!
Like splatgirl, I don't boil my noodles first. I typically use regular dry lasagne noodles and simply make sure there's enough liquid in the sauce and filling to cook the noodles in the oven. It makes lasagne projects feel far less daunting to me! And still super yummy.
Is there a good substitute for ricotta?
my husband HATES ricotta, we always use mozzarella.
i love him to pieces, but he can be so damn picky, it can ruin my love for food. :(
Lasagna is one thing I've been perfecting for a while. I like mine without meat-- heavy on cheese and light on tomato sauce. When I cut a square I like it to be a solid chunk of melted goodness-- not a big, sloppy mess of sauce. One thing that helps achieve a perfect square is pushing down your noodles as you do each layer. (I use no cook noodles, which helps). The result is beautiful.
I did not "grow up" on lasagna, but it's my go-to dish for big family meals. Salad and bread. We're good.
echo-- I've made lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta in a pinch and it was pretty good.
how are these "hacks" of any type? i feel like i might be offended if i made this gorgeous lasagna, and someone said, "nice hack."
my mom always made it with cottage cheese instead of ricotta because she was a ricotta hater, too. I think you could leave it out or substitute a layer of bechamel ala the Joy of Cooking mentioned above.
Or crumbled or pureed tofu? Or goat cheese?
anything to give it a little rich creaminess
I love lasagna, like everyone above I have my own recipe :-)
It was a repeated request by my friends in grad school and even now when I visit I just HAVE to make it.
I highly recommend slicing up some Spanish chorizo, frying it slightly and putting it in at least one of the layers, not traditional, but delicious.
I don't like Ricotta either. I use small curd cottage cheese and mix it with shredded mozzarella and some parmesan and blend it with an egg (got that mix off the back of a Skinner lasagna box a while ago) and use that in place of Ricotta.
And I do the dried lasagna noodles too...it takes longer to cook but quicker to prep. I put it in the oven and then go take a shower and get ready.
Oh and I sometimes sprinkled dried dill on top of it before...it's totally weird and not authentic in the least but there's something really yummy about it...maybe I just like it cuz my Persian mom made it that way(she uses it instead of oregano) and it makes me sentimental for childhood
i agree with the confusion over the "home hacks" title. i mean, i get it for the apartment therapy section. but "hacks" to describe these how-to's just doesn't make sense. maybe something more like "back to basics"? same content, different title.
Ricotta? Pre-cooking the noodles? No bechamel? Pre-grated mozzarella? Sorry, but I have a hard time taking this recipe seriously.
If you don't have a deep pan, try a loaf pan. 2 loaf pans use about the same amount of ingredients as a 9x13 pan. (I think--ever since I started using dry noodles I don't measure anything anymore; just layer on the sauce, noodles, cheese, etc., until the pan is almost full.
By the way, for a different sort of lasagna, definitely try 101Cookbooks' Thousand Layer Lasagna.
http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/thousand-layer-lasagna-recipe.html
I took the advice of a commenter and use fresh wonton wrappers, and then a thin but strongly flavored sauce. Different, but really good.
@Zeta Since She did not use the word Bolognese in the description I fail to see what your problem is.Sorry but you sound a bit snobbish,tbh.
I guessing Zeta is assuming that using store bought items as depicted in the photos isn't very homestyle lasagna. Maybe Zeta stores cheeses in her home and makes fresh pasta. The recipe looks pretty much like mines. And I am pro-boil noodles sorry. I am not slaving over a decent meat sauce, ricotta mix and wasting cheese to have hard noodles with no-bake lines all over it. Presentation matters just as much as taste.
I have to agree on the cottage cheese. I was forced to use it last time when I could not get ricotta at the last minute at any of the little stores in my street (I'm in Montreal, and it doesn't seem to be as much of a standard here as it was in the US). And seriously...the cottage cheese made the absolute best lasagna I have ever made, probably the best lasagna I've ever eaten. I'll never use ricotta again.
What are no-bake lines? I use regular dry lasagna noodles for mine and it turns out exactly the same as pre-cooking. I do cover mine with foil for the first half, which keeps the moisture in and cooks up the noodles. But now I have a pasta maker, so I'm excited to try fresh homemade noodles next time.
My mom always made/makes lasagna with cottage cheese, and I don't know anyone who hasn't nearly mouthgasmed over it. She used to make it meatless for our play rehearsals in highschool and it was just as good as the meaty version she made at home. It may not be chichi, but it's tasty.
And I agree about the "hack" usage. "How to make your frozen lasagna taste homemade" sounds like a hack. "How to make Lasagna" doesn't.
Agree 1000% :
And I agree about the "hack" usage. "How to make your frozen lasagna taste homemade" sounds like a hack. "How to make Lasagna" doesn't.
Barilla no-bake flat lasagna noodles are wonderful!
@Scoop & Vhision - I think Zeta may be referring to the fact that this is an Italian-American lasagna, not the type of lasagna you will find in Italy.
I never make the same Lasagna always ... I use what I have around the kitchen ... if I've to many tomatoes or cheese or ricotta, I make it ... I steam spinach and mix it with the ricotta, I roast corn and sprinkle over the cheese for a crunch ... I've tried the no-cook noodle but it came out to gooey, so I boild it ...
I use loaf pans and make as many as I can, use one and freeze the rest for last minute supper ...
That is a picture of pure heaven!
I made this recipe, it turned out fantastic!!! Thank you for posting it.
Ditch the ricotta, use bechamel instead. It will be much creamier.
I have to say since I figured out I can skip cooking the noodles first by putting the whole thing in a slow cooker for an hour and a half I make lasagna a lot more than I used to!