Simply Amazing Lasagna
Just like Garfield, we love lasagna. And you’ll love it too with this Simply Amazing Lasagna recipe!! It’s such a comfort food. But it takes a delicate balance of cheese, sauce and pasta to be just right.
I hardly ever order lasagna at a restaurant because you never know what you’re going to get. Recipes vary so much. Some are too heavy for my taste, and the noodles are almost always overcooked.
The recipe has the perfect balance of pasta to sauce to cheese. Cook the noodles a little less than al dente and they’ll be perfect al dente when baked in your lasagna. And it’s worth the time to make your own sauce instead of opening a jar.
Also, if you make lasagna fairly regularly, invest in a lasagna pan. You can always make this in a standard 9×13 casserole dish, but it will be full to the brim. A deep dish lasagne pan ensures you’ll have plenty of space for all of your layers without overflow into your oven.
The Ingredients:
Meat Sauce:
1 pound ground beef
1 pound spicy pork sausage
1 medium onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 28 oz cans fire roasted crushed tomatoes (we prefer Muir Glen)
½ cup red wine
1 tbsp dried Italian Seasoning (you can make your own if you don’t have any on hand)
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp freshly cracked pepper
1 tbsp sugar
Cheese Filling:
16 oz ricotta cheese
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 egg
Salt and pepper to taste
3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
10 lasagna noodles, cooked to a little less than al dente, then drained and rinsed with cold water until thoroughly cooled (this cooling step is super important to end up with al dente noodles in the cooked lasagna.)
The Directions:
Brown beef and sausage with onion over medium high heat. Once onions are translucent, add garlic and cook for another minute. Drain excess grease. Add tomatoes, wine, Italian seasoning, kosher salt, cracked pepper and sugar. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Mix together ingredients for cheese filling. When sauce is done, layer ingredients like this (listed from bottom to top):
- Meat sauce (about 2 cups)
- 5 Lasagna Noodles (arrange long ways to fit so they’re overlapping slightly)
- ½ of cheese filling
- 1 cup of mozzarella cheese
- Meat sauce (about 2 cups)
- ½ cup of parmesan cheese
- 5 Lasagna Noodles
- ½ of cheese filling
- 1 cup of mozzarella
- Meat sauce (about 2 cups)
- 1 cup of mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup of parmesan cheese
Cover with foil and bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20 minutes until the cheese is nicely melted and bubbly. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 10-15 minutes before digging in. That’s important if you’d like to still have the roof of your mouth intact after dinner! Also, you will probably have extra meat sauce, If so, it freezes nicely in a quart Ziploc freezer bag. Save for another day and serve over your favorite pasta.