Guys, I’m not gonna lie. This recipe is not for the faint of heart. It’s not a 30-min stress-free weeknight dinner recipe. Comfort food it is, quick and easy — decidedly not. Especially if you want to make it from scratch, which I always do. Don’t get me wrong though, lasagna is totally worth the effort. Sure, you can get it from the frozen section of your local grocery store, if you enjoy eating a steaming trough of sloppy joe. No thanks. Or, you can order it from a restaurant menu, but expect to pay at least $18-$25 for a skimpy slice. Yowzas.
Nah man, for something as exquisite, comforting, #theultimatethrowbackthursday as lasagna you want to work it old-skool, standing over the stove just like granny (not my granny — I’m no Italian, but if I were, that’s what I imagine my granny would’ve done). You need to fully embrace the process. Give yourself over to it. Luxuriate in the entire undertaking and dinner, my friends, will be like Anton Ego taking that first bite of ratatouille in, well, Ratatouille. Glorious.
I reserve a full day for lasagna making and even then, it is best served the day after. The flavours have time to mingle, get to know one another, mellow out, meld together, and have flavour babies. Really, you’re building a flavour family for your family. Who cares if it’s a two-day endeavour — it feeds a party of ten or a family of four for 2.5 meals, so it’s worth it!
First off, start your meat sauce early so it can simmer away on the back burner all day. The sauce is the main event, the star of the show, so the most effort is spent on this part. You have been warned. It involves a bit of chopping and dicing and mincing (using a garlic press cuts down some prep time), and takes a bit of elbow grease to mince the meat in the pan, but the end result is a rich, smooth, silky meat sauce so aromatic and gorgeously thick that you’ll want to face plant in it.
This is where the little bit of “hard work” comes into play. Pound away at that pan like you’re Tony Montana and the meat is your enemy. Seriously, go for it. Whip out your wooden spatula and yell at the meat: “Say hello to mah little friend!” and rapid-fire chop the heck out of that beef-sausage mixture. You want to make minced meat out of the…minced meat. You’re also gonna have to rip apart the tomatoes with your bare hands. Ok, you can chop them up, but I prefer to tear each tomato apart and squish out the innards juices. Things might take a dark turn at this point. But don’t worry, the time for hard work is almost over.
Once the meat sauce is seasoned and simmering, sit back and relax! Pick up a good book, and put your feet up. You deserve a break. But don’t forget to stir it up every now and again — take plenty of taste tests, quality control checks, sneaky snacks, whatever excuse you need to dip your spoon into that deliciousness.
The last few steps come together pretty quickly — just boil the pasta till just under al dente. Yes, UNDER the al dente stage. Unless you like to be able to pureé your food through your teeth, or have no teeth, please undercook the noodles. You want the noodles to be about two-thirds cooked, especially if using dry noodles (if you’re all fancy and using fresh lasagna noodles, I wouldn’t boil them at all) because the pasta will continue cooking in the oven and soak up all the sauce. But more importantly, so that the noodles will retain their structural integrity when you dish it up. It’ll stand up nice and tall, oozing cheese and presenting beautiful striations of meat sauce, cheese, and pasta layers instead of slumping into a soggy mess on your plate.
To finish, mix the ricotta, egg, and parsley, and gather your cheeses and sauce and pasta to get a production line going. I got my husband to help. He did the cheeses and I did the sauce and pasta. Teamwork FTW! The order of layers to go down is in the printable recipe. (I laid it all out because I always get confused with the order of ingredients.) Anyways, once the lasagna is layered and ready to go, you can either:
- Go ahead and bake it up for dinner, or,
- Exercise patience and self-control and wrap it up to bake the next day.
Either way, it’ll be delicious. And you’ll probably have leftover sauce for another pasta dish, so really, this lasagna is more like the giving tree. Just giving and giving and giving.
So amazing. So worth it. A total crowd pleaser. If you’re making it for guests (which I highly recommend) it’ll definitely elicit oohs and aahs, and when they ask if you slaved all day over it, you can honestly say: “Yes. Yes, I did. Now shut up and eat”.
xoxo,
mlee
P.S: Darren and I had the left-over sauce over spaghettini for a date-night over the weekend (yes, we do stay-in date nights because we are old and cheap) and he said: “This is better than Ask For Luigi”. *whaaaaaaat* Honestly, I think the price point was probably a key factor in his evaluation, but hey, I’ll take the compliment.
P.P.S: Full disclosure: after two helpings each there was still more sauce left in the pan so we just stood over the stove like a couple of hobos and scraped the last few spoonfuls into our greedy little mouths. No regrets.
Luxe Lasagna
Serves: 8-10
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 4-5 hours
Ingredients
- 1 pound hot Italian sausage
- 3/4 pound lean ground beef
- 1/2 cup onion, minced
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
- 2 (28 ounce) cans whole tomatoes (chop or pull apart tomatoes into small, even chunks), along with remaining liquid
- 1-2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs
- 1.5 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 4 tablespoons fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped finely
- 2 tablespoons fresh basil, julienned
- 12 lasagna noodles
- 16 ounces ricotta cheese
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 pound mozzarella, shredded
- 3/4 pound parmesan, grated
Instructions
- Swirl some extra virgin olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan or Dutch oven on high heat. Add the Italian sausage and ground beef and cook till browned, using a flat wooden spatula to mince the meat until it is broken up into small, even pieces.
- Add the onion and garlic continue to sauté over medium heat until the onions are translucent and the garlic is fragrant.
- Add tomato paste and mix well with the meat mixture. Stir and continue cooking on high heat till it the mixture is nice and thick, like a meat paste.
- Chop or pull apart the canned tomatoes and stir them into the pan, along with the remaining liquid.
- Season with sugar, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons chopped parsley and 2 tablespoons julienned basil.
- Turn heat down and simmer, covered, for about 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.
- Bring a large pot of salted water (1 tablespoon salt) to a boil. Cook lasagna noodles in boiling water for 5 to 7 minutes. Drain noodles, and rinse with cold water. Lay them on a flat surface to retain their shape.
- In a mixing bowl, combine ricotta cheese with egg, remaining parsley, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
To assemble:
- 1st layer: meat sauce, 3 lasagna noodles, 1/3 ricotta mixture, 1/4 mozzarella
- 2nd layer: meat sauce, 1/3 parmesan, 3 lasagna noodles, 1/3 ricotta mixture, 1/4 mozzarella
- 3rd layer: meat sauce, 1/3 parmesan, 3 lasagna noodles, 1/3 ricotta mixture, 1/4 mozzarella
- 4th layer: meat sauce, 3 lasagna noodles, meat sauce, 1/4 mozzarella, 1/3 parmesan
To bake:
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
- Cover lasagna with foil, making sure that foil does not touch the cheese.
- Bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil, and bake an additional 25 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes before serving.
Notes
Heavily adapted from Allrecipes.com.
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