Homemade lasagna

I love making lasagne and cannelloni.

They're very easy to make and are delicious.

Homemade lasagna is way better than stouffer’s. Use a recipe with a beschamel instead of ricotta and make a slow cooked ragout. So delicious and worth it.

Eh... I'd rather just buy the Stouffers.

At Turkey Hill, we grow our own lasagna.

I find is the secret of making good lasagne is getting really thin sheets of lasagna.

Why are the only two options home or frozen? Do they not have restaurants where you live OP?

yes, but I don't usually get lasagna at a restaurant

Why don’t you have the servants make it for you?

start making homemade sauce.

When you have a sauce you love, then just buy high quality ingredients (cheese, ricotta, olive oil).

I refused to pay them for doing half ass job and fired them

Costco has a lasagna ravioli Bolognese that I love!

Paris to the rescue.

frozen lasagne always has noodles that are too thick.

You can fix that r7. Just saying, surely there is some restaurant around you where you could pick up some nice lasagna to quell your craving.

To me I don't want to cook an entire lasagna when I live alone. It's too much.

Chef John's Pancake Lasagna for One.

I haven't made it but his recipes are generally very good.

Also, he's a real chef not just some YTer.

R12 - best part is at 06:00 - "It's working!" That chick is as familiar with a kitchen as I am with a private jet.

1.) Make your own pasta.

2.) Make your own tomato sauce.

3.) Alternate each row with ground meat and ricotta/mozarella combo.

4.) Lightly sprinkle mozarella over the top to help create your crust.

You can alternate your ground meat mix with a pound of Jones sausage cubed if you want to be daring.

There's recipes online for one pan options. You just use one pan to fry up your meat or vegetarian filling, then you mix through sheets of pasta - so it's less of a layered lasanga but close enough. You still do your layers of cheese and you can put in sour cream in lieu of the white sauce.

You then put pan in oven for final cooking.

Making your own is exponentially better than anything you can buy frozen (if you make it right). I like to use Chef John's Bolognese recipe for the sauce, fresh pasta, and a béchamel sauce. It's time consuming, but not that much active work. It also freezes really well, so make it, freeze what you don't eat, and next time you have a craving for it, you can defrost some good stuff rather than that garbage Stouffers shite.

A poster in a previous lasagne thread mentioned using cabbage leaves instead of lasagne noodles. I saw a recipe for something like that in one of Marcella Hazan's books. Definitely want to try it. Is more like ground pork that is mildly seasoned and spread thinly between layers of cabbage leaves than a lasagne though.

I will try it with a white sauce flavoured with bay leaves instead of nutmeg.

Have also always wanted to try a lasagne with ham and mushrooms. Always talk about it. Still have to do it.

OP where do you live that you think NOW would be a great time to fire up the oven and bake anything? Australia?

Louisiana

if you can get some rectangular lock'n'lock borosilicate glass containers, you can bake mini lasagna and cover/freeze them in large portion sizes (half for a meal, unless you want to pig out). (Or line aluminum loaf pans with parchment paper).

Or you can just bake them in a standard pan and then cut them when cool and wrap them in saran wrap, as lasagne shouldn't have sauce oozing out of it by the cupful and will cut easily.

I buy the Costco one, because it really is good. But I cut it into squares. I get abut 6 squares out of one casserole. I put them in baggies and freeze them. It's so easy to put one serving into an oven safe dish and into my toaster oven to cook, while I make a salad. 50 minutes on 375. I cover it loosely with tin foil, and it's perfect.

Don't wrap it in saran wrap. it will get mushy. If you bake a whole casserole of lasagna, let it cool to room temp. Then put it into you fridge covered loosely with tinfoil. After it's been in there for a few hours and has a chance to set, then cut it up into serving sized squares, put it into individual freeze bags and freeze it. I do it all the time.

It is really a LOT of work. The only way I've made it 'worth it" is having friends over, get a bit tipsy and do it together. Otherwise, find a good Italian place and they will sell you a pan for less than what you would pay for a: making it from scratch, and b: buying it as a sit down customer.

I learned this about pizza dough too. Most places will give you a gorgeous ball of dough for only a couple of bucks.

r27 That's a great tip about pizza dough. And for an extra couple of bucks, they'll actually make you a pizza.

Lasagna is tricky in that is it really worth the cost of all the ingredients and effort if you're just making it for yourself? Yes you can freeze the rest of it, but what also freezes well - Stouffer's lasagna.

If I'm going to splurge while out grocery shopping, I'd rather spend it on things like Ribeye steaks.

I have never heard of using sour cream in lasagna. It could be good, but not very authentic. Neither is cottage cheese good in lasagna. My Italian grandmother used ricotta cheese. I like this much better than béchamel sauce. The savory, tangy sauce needs the ricotta as a contrast, if that makes sense. Meat was either ground beef, or no meat. I use lean ground beef and Italian sausage. My great grandmother would add hard boiled eggs. I do not recommend using the no boil lasagne noodles. They always come out pasty and not good. Go ahead and do a little extra work and use regular lasagne noodles. Homemade sauce is always the best, but jarred works in a pinch. However you make it, I am sure your lasagna will turn out delicious. Homemade is always better than frozen. Now I am VERY hungry. When is dinner?

I like the no boil noodles. I usually just buy the regular boil noodles and then put them in dry. The come out the same.

If I make lasagna, I usually do it in more than one day. One day I make the bolognese. Then freeze or refrigerate it. And another day, make the lasagna.

And I dozens of small toaster oven size pans that I make about 4-5 lasagnas at a time in. Just assemble and then freeze them. Bake the frozen ones whenever I want.

I just saw a video last night that has had me craving lasagna all day. It's a Youtube channel called Pasta Grannies. This lady made her lasagna noodles so thin that she gets 7 layers in a small pan! I got some lasagna for dinner tonight but it's not the same I think I am going to have to make this recipe.

Make 100 hour lasagna, OP.

Look. It really isn't that complicated. The most important thing is the sauce. Make you sauce, a meat sauce or a Bolognese sauce. If you go with Bolognese it is hade but so worth it. Once the sauce is made, you're ready. You use Ricotta cheese, and use two eggs (raw) to 3-4 pounds and finely grated Parmesan and Pecorino Romano mixed. Salt, pepper, chopped parsley. Mix it all together in a bowl. But MAKE SURE YOU DRAIN THE RICOTTA BEFORE YOU BEGIN. Get rid of the excess water.

Par boil your lasagna noodles, then assemble. Put it in a 350 oven for about 45 -55 minutes loosely covered by tin foil. Don't serve it right away. It needs to east for about 15 -20 minutes before you serve it.

[quote] If you go with Bolognese it is hade but so worth it.

It's not *hard,* it's just time consuming as you have to let all the layers reduce.

When I want to go all out, I make my own pasta, which I interleave with Bolognese, besciamella, and Parmigiano-Reggiano, alla Marcella Hazan.

When I don't want to bother, or want to go meatless, I use the recipe posted below, from Lucinda Scala Quinn @ marthastewart.com

Another half-measure is to make the Bolognese, the besciamella, and the parm, but mix them with box pasta, usually cavatappi.

If I'm too lazy to do any of these things, I go out for lasagne. Locally (Pittsburgh), Piccolo Forno's is my favorite, but among chain restaurants, I like Bravo's version. It's better by far than a lot of what's available locally.

I can imagine how carefully R36 pronounces “besciamella” as she describes her recipe.

My husbear occasionally makes this lasagna recipe, including the homemade noodles. It is sublimely good.

It's balsamella in the book, R37.

If you are in Louisiana you should try the cajun ninja lasagna recipe. So yummy.

There are certain things that will always taste better when homemade, and that includes lasagna and chocolate chip cookies. Stouffers is kind of gross actually.

I'm weird. I don't care for the heavy lasagna or the stuffed shells. I do love the piccatas and other lemon/wine based sauces.

besciamella

Lasagna roll-ups - that's the ticket!

Lasagna is one of the very few dishes that taste even better the day after.

Instead of besciamella, make sausage gravy. Layer the noodles with scrambled eggs. And wa-la! breakfast lasagna.

Joy Behar did this.

Personally:

I would leave out the sausage.

Make sure you like the sauce first. Practice and adjust to your taste buds.

You can blend parsley and spinach in the ricotta mixture. I prefer this way. I prefer finely chopped.

Buy high quality Cheeses and Olive Oil.

Can we discuss Joy Behar's kitchen? She has great taste. This kitchen is timeless, a classic.

R48, a millionaire has a great kitchen! I’ll alert the media.

I will get called a frau, and will be flamed and shamed for this, but if you're not particularly interested in investing the time in creating a homemade, from-scratch lasagna, this slow cooker recipe is surprisingly good. I was always afraid of putting pasta in the slow cooker, but I'll be damned if this didn't turn out very well. It definitely beats a Stouffer's.

It isn't the only one I make, but it's so fucking good on those autumn & winter evenings when I 've been doing yard work, and come in cold and tired. I take a hot relaxing shower, put on the pajamas, and tuck in. I've been making it for years.

I DO recommend at least pulling together a simple homemade sauce. But it isn't absolutely necessary.

I'm saving that r50 since you are personally raving about it.

Joy Behar ruined it by putting it in an aluminum foil pan. With tomato sauce? Never! I've made lasagna for people (births, deaths) and they give me the pan back, eventually. If they don't, big deal, I'm out a $20 pan. I think Joy can afford to give a dish away. I hate eating any food out of an aluminum container - always taste the metal, yuck.

As much of a purist as I can be, that Breakfast Lasagne at r46 doesn't sound half bad. If I were serving it to others, I might think of another name...breakfast casserole, perhaps. You could use the pancakes from Chef John's recipe in r15 instead of pasta.

WTF?!! 52 posts and no mention of Vegetable Lasagna?!! VEGETABLE FUCKING LASAGNA?!!

I don't like the taste of ricotta cheese.

[quote]I don't like the taste of ricotta cheese.

See one of the recipes above that uses bechamel, aka besciamella, balsamella.

Going to an Italian restaurant tonight. Haven't decided yet between lasagne and pizza w/oven-roasted roma tomatoes, caramelized red onion, kalamata olives, baby artichoke hearts, fresh arugula, and feta cheese.

get both.

This thread has me feeling like Garfield over here. I've been getting lasagna from all the restaurants around me the last few nights trying to find one that has 1) thin noodles with many layers and 2) besciamella instead of ricotta. The funny thing is I never used to eat lasagna ever! If I wanted something cheesy and layered I used to go with eggplant parmesan.

Sorry you're a fat whore, r58!

Sorry I forgot to sign my post!