- We are sorted. A group of mates from
London exploring the newest and best in a world of food whilst trying to have a few laughs along the way. We've got chefs, we've got normals and a whole world of
stuff for you to explore that everything we do starts with you. - Hello I'm Mike, this is Ben. - And today we're doing our
favourite thing ever, pasta, but layers of pasta with stuff in between. - In front of us are
three different lasagnes, they have different cooking methods, they have different pros,
but which one's best? - Well, we will compare
them at the end, but first, we're going to teach you how
to make each and everyone, and J, you're going first.
What you going to cook us? - I'm cooking you a quick lasagne. - And how am I going to
make you a quick lasagne, I hear you ask. By cheating, every single step of the way. Here's what we're going to use: sausages olive oil fennel seeds garlic and chilli flakes. For my sauce, all I'm going to use is tomato purée, a stock cube and some water. I'm going to make a herby ricotta with: parmesan ricotta basil, parsley and some fresh lasagne sheets. And all three of us are
going to be using this magnificent beast. Cheat number 1: rather than
using a traditional beef mince for my meat, I'm going to use sausages. They already have a load
of flavour packed in to them and then we're going to
add some more flavour too. So, I'm going to heat some oil in a pan and then squeeze in my sausage meat, add some fennel seeds
and let that cook off for about 5 minutes. That will give me time to
mince 2 cloves of garlic, and then I can add that
and some chilli flakes into my sausage mix too. Cheat number 2: my sauce. Now we could spend hours
sweating down onions and garlic and tomato, no
we don't want any of that. Tomato purée, chicken stock cube, water into a pan with our sausages and let it all simmer down by about half and you have a really rich sauce. You'll notice I'm not going
to season any of this, stock cubes are already really salty and the sausages have
already got perfect seasoning through them anyway. Job done. Cheat number 3: now we could
go to all of the effort of making a beautiful bechamel sauce but who's got time for that. We're going to make a
herby ricotta instead. So, into our food processor
with a knife blade, we're going to add ricotta,
parmesan, basil and some parsley and blitz it all up so there's
no lumps of parmesan left, and the herbs have made the ricotta a lovely sort of green colour. Cheat number 4, and believe me, you're gonna like this one: we're not gonna put our
lasagne in the oven. Which breaks all the rules of lasagne. We're basically going to take
some fresh lasagne sheets, put them in boiling salted
water for 2 to 3 minutes to cook through, drain them and then serve them on
the plate along with our sausage sauce, and our herby ricotta. - [All] Ahhhhhhh - I tell you what, an open lasagne always, I think, looks quite fancy. - The question is, does it need the meat? How about we try vegan lasagne? Nah, I pushed boundaries a little bit, that might be a little bit too far. - Trust me - Yeah, that's right, I'm
making a vegan lasagne. I'm simply removing the meat and replacing that with lentils, but the really smart bit is, I'm using butternut squash
for my be bechamel sauce. And this is what we're going to need: butternut squash, cashew nuts, some olive oil I've got onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and some rosemary, a vegetable stock, chopped tomatoes, and tomato purée. Then some lentils and some lasagne sheets to layer it all up. I'm also using the same machine as Jamie, but with a food processor and a blender. For me, the star of this
lasagne is the bechamel sauce. Now, obviously we can't
use butter and milk. What we're using is cashew
nuts and butternut squash. It has butter in the title
but there's no butter in it. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to put my cashew nuts in a bowl and soak them
in water overnight. Or you can speed it along
and use boiling water, but keep it just to an hour. Next up, your beautiful butternut squash. Now the worst thing about
these is peeling them, so we're not going to do that. We're going to chop it straight in half, scoop out the seeds, season it with olive oil, salt and pepper, bung it in the oven for
an hour at 200 degrees. The perfect tomato sauce,
it needs a strong base. We've lots of layers,
which is why we're using some celery, carrots,
onions and some garlic. We're going to peel all those, stick them in my food processor and
use a course grating disc. This will get it nice and small so we can fry it off in olive oil. Right, let's crack on with our bechamel. You wanna swap out the
food process for a blender. And then pour in your
cashews with its water, and then scoop out the flesh
of your butternut squash and add that in as well. Season it with salt and
pepper and give it a blitz with a tablespoon of olive
oil, so it all comes together. With the base veg now softened, it's time to add the rest of stuff. We got some water, two tins of tomatoes, stock cube, tomato purée, and, of course, your lentils. Now, it may look like a
lot of liquid in there, but all that flavour will get
absorbed into the lentils. You want to bring this to a simmer, and cook for about 45 minutes. You might add a little bit of water, to stop it catching at the bottom. Now it's just time to layer this up, we're going for lentils at the bottom, then some lasagne sheets. These are eggless, as
are most lasagne sheets, but check before you buy them. Then your butternut squash bechamel, and then, same again, same
again...it's a lasagne. That then goes into the
oven at 180, for 30 minutes. - [All] Wahhhh, ahhhh. - Come on better than
that, then come on, ahhh? - Well, it smells better than it looks. - Cheers - But, this is the ultimate lasagne, no questions asked. I'm calling this the all day lasagne, because it's an effort, a real effort. But, it is worth it. I'm gonna use beef short rib, gonna make an amazing sauce
and ragout around it, with loads of root vegetables, carrots, celery, garlic,
onion and rosemary. Add tomatoes, tomato
purée, stock and white wine to make an incredible
sauce that cooks down. I'm also making my own pasta
with semolina, flour, water. And an incredible bechamel, butter, flour, milk,
flavoured with two cheeses: Parmesan and Tallegio. Gorgeous beef short rib. I'm gonna sear it off in a really hot pan and a little bit of oil, to
get a bit of colour on it, whilst we start the base to the sauce. The base to my sauce you've seen before. Exactly the same as Barry's. Onion, carrot, celery, garlic, peeled, added to the food
processed with the knife blade and blitzed up to a paste. Also, don't waste all of that beef fat. That goes into a pan
with oil and rosemary. Jamie used fresh lasagne sheets, Barry used dried lasagne sheets, we're making our own pasta,
so while the veg sweats off, in the bowl with a dough
hook, knead together semolina, zero-zero flour or
double 00 flour and water. All the weights measurements
available down below. Don't forget a pinch of salt. To finish the sauce, when
all the blitzed up veg have softened, about 5 minutes or so, bung in the white wine, it's quite a lot. You want that to reduce
by half before adding in tomatoes, tomato purée, stock cube and then put your beef rib pieces back in. As soon as all those tomatoes
come have back up to a simmer, lid on and into an oven, 160
degrees Celsius for 3 hours, until you can see the
bone, the meat shrunk back and it will pull nicely. After plenty of kneading, the
pasta should be really soft. It's no-egg pasta, so it is
slightly softer than normal, but it should be really, really elasticy. Wrap it in cling film. Put
it in the fridge. Rest. With the pasta rested,
we're now gonna roll it out into sheets of lasagne, so whack on the lasagne roller attachment, dust it with flour, and
then you want to roll out not too thin, to about
4 out of the 9 setting. And then we can actually
layer out, and dry out at room temperature for several hours, whilst our beef continues to cook. In Jamie's quick version, he
skipped the bechamel altogether and blitzed up ricotta. Barry made something that was dairy-free for the vegan option. We're going all out. Butter, melt into a pan, turned into a roux with flour, and then add in the milk
a little bit at a time. It's whole milk so it's super rich. We're gonna season it with
grated nutmeg, and bay leaf, salt and pepper, and let it bubble away. And then we're gonna go in
with two different cheeses. Talleggio, which is a
gorgeous, soft, smelly, sticky Italian cheese, and
a big chunk of parmesan. For speed, we're gonna quickly grate it up using the fine grating
disc in the food processor. Half is going into the sauce, half we'll hold back, to
sprinkle over the lasagne before it goes into the oven. And then the last thing
to do before we layer this lasagna up, is to grab
those gorgeous short rib and literally remove the bones, and it will just slide straight out. Rip up all the rest the
meat into one sauce. You can skim off any fat
that might be on the top. And then layer it, meat, pasta,
sauce, and keep repeating all the way up into a dish. Finishing with that final bit of parmesan. And that is an all day, all out lasagne. All it needs is half
an hour in a hot oven, so the parmesan goes lovely and golden, the pasta layers cook through. You can do that straight away, or you can put it in
the fridge and cook it the next day so the
flavours get even better. Up to you, half an hour, job done. - Yeah - Ahhh - Yeah - I don't think we need
to taste these two now, cause my mind is purely
focused on that one. - No, it's all in the
tasting and fennel sausage could be the way forward. - [All] Cheers - Well, fennel and sausage
is always a good combination. A little kick of cheese is quite nice. - It's definitely delicately balanced. It's not overwhelming either. - Now in no way would I
claim this is traditional - I think that's
probably for the best. - But is it delicious? Yes it is. And is it quick. Yes it is - Twenty, thirty minutes,
job done and that herby ricottay thing is
absolutely delicious. - You know what, I don't miss
the bechamel sauce either, which I never thought I'd say. - No? - Kinda lucky, cause you
not got one in there either. Right, let's dig into this
one, and shall we just say, this is vegan, I'm about to
put it on a plate that isn't, but, hey, we're not. - [All] Cheers - What you get is the
tang from quite an intense tomatoey rounded, stewy,
ragout-y kind of thing, but also a sweetness from that
kind of squashy cashew nut. - Now for a bechamel sauce with no dairy, how creamy is that sauce? - It has all the texture
of lasagne, and I mean the different textures that
you get from the pasta, from a traditional ragu or meat sauce, and it has that cheeseeness
to it as well on top. That's astonishing. All right - Yep - We've had the cheat. - We've had the vegan
and we have the real one. - [All] Cheers - I don't think there's many
lasagnes you could serve as a canapé, cause honestly,
one mouthful is enough to take you to heaven. It's not enough - Honestly, the flavour.. - It's enough to take you. - I knew this one was gonna be
good before it came to table because the stuff we had
left over has all disappeared and everybody has said,
this is the best lasagne they've ever eaten. - It's not just the meatiness of the meat' It's the nutmeg and the
bay. It's the tallegio. It's the little touches, the nice cheeses, the seasoning with the nutmeg. It's just so good. - Barry, which is your favourite lasagne? - It is standout, but I would
also say the butternut and cashew of that is brilliant and I've also loved fennel and sausage together, so there's - They all have their place - No, this one. - That is my ultimate
lasagne. I've never had a vegan lasagne that good before and I've never made a
lasagne that quick before. - Tell us what you think. Comment down below, which would
you most like to taste now, which would you most like to cook. You can get all the recipes down below. - I think that final
lasagne at least deserves a massive thumbs up, so
if you like the look of it then you should like this video. - I would go as far to
say, possibly the best dish we've made in the entire three recipes compared this series. - I completely agree with that. - Just cut yourself a small portion. - Thank you very much for watching. Make sure you reach out with a comment, by commenting down below.
We read all of them and we will try and reply
to as many as possible. And we will see you every
Wednesday, every Sunday at 4:00pm UK time. - That's what I was gonna say. - As we mentioned, we don't just make top quality YouTube videos. We've built the sorted club
where we use the best things we've learnt to create stuff
that's hopefully interesting and useful to other food lovers. Check it out if you're interested. Thank you for watching and
we'll see you in a few days. - How many lasagnes do you
think you've had in your life? - 3,412
