Easy lasagna recipes | tomato & ricotta | meat sauce & cream

here's two dead simple lasagnas you can assemble in minutes both built on dried lasagna noodles that we layer straight into the pan no boiling i'm calling this one lasagna ogratin and this one lasagna o tuesday it's shockingly good despite the fact that we're just gonna dump in a bunch of prepared ingredients the pan will be the only dirty dish and the biggest downside of not boiling your noodles is they have to fit whatever pan you're using you can break them but that's obviously not ideal this brand makes a shorter lasagna that fits right into a standard 8 inch or 20 centimeter square pan excellent we're not going to pre-cook a sauce so we cannot use whole canned tomatoes like that too much water in the can you want a can of crushed or ground tomatoes ideally a brand with particularly concentrated flavor this is the one i use for pizza sauce and it's perfect for this lasagna just a little bit goes in the bottom of the pan to keep the first layer of noodles wet and the way i'm going to do this is season each layer as it goes in a little olive oil just for flavor smoosh that around and then sprinkle in just a little salt canned tomatoes usually already have some salt in them and then i'm just shaking in rando italian herbs and spices garlic and onion powder since we don't have the fresh forms of either dried oregano basil marjoram parsley chili flakes you could just buy an italian seasoning blend but i am apparently too italian to own an italian seasoning blend because that makes sense first lasagna noodles are in and this is going to feel kind of weird but i'm going to sprinkle them with salt just a little salt the second biggest downside of not boiling your noodles is they won't be seasoned by the salty water so a little salt okay i've got one pound half a kilo of ricotta cheese the big benefit of ricotta as a filling is that it isn't terrible for you it's very high protein and even the whole milk kind is pretty low cal as cheeses go half of that container in and smoosh it out you might could top that with some grated mozzarella yes i'm using a pre-grated bag today it's tuesday nona i don't have time for your judgment you see what else i'm doing i'm reaching for the green can of grated ostensible parmesan just let me live my life noodles on and then that sprinkling of salt you could just strategically over season your sauce and depend on it to donate salt to the pasta but with this recipe i'm not pre-mixing anything and i'm not really tasting anything i'm just eyeballing and seasoning each layer one by one allows me to keep track visually of how much total salt i need to put in plus maybe the pasta gets seasoned a little bit better if it's in immediate proximity to those dissolved grains no idea but there's the rest of my ricotta and leave yourself enough mozzarella to melt on the top later fourth and final pasta layer sprinkle with salt i always try to finish with sauce on top we need that sauce to keep everything wet i ended up using like 80 percent of that standard 28 ounce 800 gram can herbs and spices maybe a little bit more olive oil for good measure and seal tightly with foil got to keep that steam trapped in there to cook the pasta in the oven at 350 fahrenheit 180c that's a little cooler than my normal lasagna temperature but we need to cook this one a little slower to let that pasta soften before anything starts drying out 45 minutes later here we are time to top with the reserved mozzarella and back this goes for 15 minutes uncovered i want to give excess water a chance to evaporate it's been in for an hour total and now i will turn on my top element my broiler to brown the cheese once you turn that on don't walk away it'll only take a couple of minutes and could burn real fast let this cool and solidify at least 15 minutes i'd say before cutting and scooping a little fresh basil cheers that up and if you want it to look a little neater bake it the night before and chill it whole in the fridge the next day it'll be firm and you can cut it really cleanly reheat in the oven and here's the trick that i just figured out maybe you already knew it sit the pieces on just a little splash of water cover with foil and then the water keeps the whole thing from drying out but especially that bottom layer of pasta after 15 minutes it's ready to eat but you can freshen up how it looks by melting on a little more mozzarella with your top element check out how tidy that looks you know i always say that you want to be careful about overcooking your pizza sauce otherwise your pizza will taste like lasagna this lasagna kind of tastes like pizza the sauce has not been cooked very much so it's really bright and fresh i kind of love it and the pasta is still pleasantly al dente because we didn't parboil it that is a tremendous weeknight home helper much like the sponsor of this video hello fresh america's number one meal kit lauren and i really do subscribe to hello fresh and we really do rely on it a few nights a week it's a life saver this meal has literally no chopping we didn't have to go to the grocery store and everything is pre-portioned which means much less food waste like purple cabbage is one of my favorite things but very rarely can i actually use the whole head that they sell at the store a university of michigan study found that the carbon footprint of a meal like this is 25 percent lower than something comparable you cook from groceries we usually get vegetarian boxes just to help us eat meatless more often but there are tons of different meal plans you can get meat no meat locale family friendly and the recipes are consistently tasty i pick up tricks from hello fresh meals that i use in my own recipes i am not ashamed to admit you want to try this go to hellofresh.com and use code adamragucia12 to get 12 free meals including free shipping 12 free meals with my link and code in the description thank you hello fresh now the second lasagna we're going to do is just as quick and easy if you have some frozen bolognese or other meat sauce in your chill chest i have a recipe linked in the description that i make all the time in huge batches and freeze but for the sake of demonstration let's make a quick meat sauce ourselves right now just for this lasagna an onion and a big carrot diced up pretty fine cut it into thin slices cut the slices into long sticks line the sticks up and mow them into little cuboids you could skip the carrot honestly i just like it a wide pan will cook this sauce quicker and it doesn't have to be terribly deep because we're only making enough for the lasagna i'm blasting my veg in a little olive oil on high heat keep it moving constantly and it will not burn until it's cooked off a ton of its water four or five minutes later and i see things are getting soft and dry enough now that they're starting to brown time to push everything out to the side and smash in my one pound or half a kilo of ground beef this is chuck you could totally use one of these fancy new soy protein fake meats instead my new favorite way to brown ground meat is just to push it out into a thin disc and then leave it there for a couple of minutes until i can really smell it going brown before it burns i'll start scraping it up and all the water that's going to come out of the rest of the meat should be enough to deglaze whatever is stuck to the bottom with a smash trick the amount of brown flavor i get is so great that i really don't have to worry about browning the rest of the meat in there i mean if i was browning several pounds of meat i'd keep frying until everything was really brown but with this much gnat i've got enough browning proportionally already so in goes a big squeeze of tomato paste to brown for just a second before it burns i'm going to deglaze with tomato water remember how i said cans of whole tomatoes have a ton of water in them there you go deglaze the pan with that and now that it's out of the can i can reach in there and just give everything a preliminary squish this will help the tomatoes cook more quickly once i get them in the pan a whole bunch of the aforementioned italian herbs and spices just a pinch of salt to start with we can taste for salt at the end reduce that heat to a simmer and let it go for as long as you have patience for here it is after an hour and i always like to say you can replace wine in recipes like this with a little balsamic vinegar this is white balsamic for cooking purposes it's basically white wine concentrate just a little splash for acidity and sweetness stir and taste for seasoning no more salt i like that it's done i'm going to make a lasagna twice as big this time i think these noodles should fit just barely yeah first thing i'm going to do is flood the pan with a thin layer of cream oh white on white that's great filmmaking ragusa bravo lasagna noodles on a sprinkling of salt just because i liked how well this seasoning method worked on my other lasagna and if you can be bothered to chop it up some fresh garlic goes really great with the cream i'll spoon on a layer of my meat sauce you know instead of a pound of ground meat you can make a great sauce with like 2 pounds of finely chopped mushrooms just cook the crap out of them to drive off the water and get them brown very nice a shake of parmesan just for kicks and another pasta layer sprinkle with salt and garlic and then more meat sauce and repeat i'm saving time by not bothering to make some kind of white sauce to alternate with my meat sauce just meat sauce alternated with pasta instead once i've built up my four layers i'm gonna pour in more cream the cream drips around and settles in different little pockets and when it cooks it flows to the top so the result is some of the heterogeneity you would normally get by building alternating layers but this is way less work i've got a pint of cream in there total 500 ml or so cover tightly with foil and bake as before 45 minutes at 180c uncover and that might not look very appealing but this is why the universe gave us melted cheese 15 minutes uncovered then flip on what brits called the grill to brown the top and look at the undulating waves that sprung up as the pasta cooked and expanded outward that's probably analogous to some geological process that results in rolling hills scoop it after a 15-minute rest and it'll look like this you bake raw cream with something starchy and it turns into a delicious sauce it works in a potato gratin it works in lasagna for a tidier presentation here we are cutting it after it's chilled sit the pieces in a little water to keep everything moist 15 minutes covered a little fresh cheese under the broiler for a sec and here we are right back where we started that's called a circular narrative works great in the movies

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 617,470

Rating: 4.9440351 out of 5

Keywords: lasagne

Id: XKiKcLStEuM

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SwingBatterBatter]

This might be a dumb question, but I've always struggled to find cans of crushed or ground tomatoes in the UK, so if I was making this recipe, would I be best cooking a simple tomato sauce first and then using it when assembling the lasagna? Or would partially crushing/blending a can of whole tomatoes do the job?

[u/Space_D]

There has to be a typo in the first recipe right? He lists:

1 pound (454g) grated pecorino (you might not need all of it)

1/2 cup (50g) grated parmesan or pecorino

That first one should be mozzarella?