How to Make the Best Cheese and Tomato (Meatless) Lasagna and Really Good Homemade Garlic Bread

[Music] today on America's Test Kitchen Bridget shows Julia the secrets to a spectacular cheese and tomato lasagna Jack challenges Julia to a tasting of jarred anchovies and Keith makes Bridget unforgettable garlic bread it's all coming up right here on America's Test Kitchen simple recipes are the hardest perfect because there's no flash or sparkle to cover up any of your mistakes like lasagna there are a lot of complicated versions out there such as Bolognese or lasagna Carnivale which is made of tiny meatballs but today we're making lasagna de ma grow and elegant cheese and tomato lasagna known for its simplicity and we're gonna start with the tomato sauce is where we're starting here today and we want to build a really rich robust sauce despite any meat or vegetables in it I've got a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil right in the saucepan I've got a heating over medium heat and to that I'm going to add one onion and we've diced this pretty fine now we're going to add one and a half teaspoons of sugar a little bit unusual and some people are very against putting any sugar in a tomato sauce that'd be me yeah this is going to help to temper the acidity but we want a more deeply flavored sauce now we're going to add 1/2 a teaspoon of red pepper flakes 1/2 a teaspoon of dried oregano and a half a teaspoon of salt easy easy easy so I'll go ahead and stir this we're gonna let this go for about ten minutes all right those onions look nice and soft you're not really looking for any brown color just soft at this point so now we're going to add four cloves of garlic here is our first savory ingredient this is eight Goulet's of anchovy yeah we rinsed them patted them dry they're packed full of glutamate so that have that savory taste to them so we're gonna let this go for about two minutes again we're over a medium heat you don't want to burn the garlic but we do want to cook it just so it has a little bit of a deeper flavor that is already smelling really really is but it's not tomato sauce not yet I really want lots of tomato built right into the sauce without having to cook it hours and hours and hours so we're gonna start with ones made a product that's already precooked for us this is a quarter cup of tomato paste and to that we'll add one fourteen and a half ounce can of diced tomatoes we want a little bit of texture in here but not too much and it looks like those tomatoes were drained so the liquids been removed very good catch one last tomato ingredient we have a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes now those crushed Tomatoes they are not precooked but they're going to add a really nice smooth texture to the sauce now we're not done with savory flavor here we're putting cheese in the sauce oh there you go this is 1/2 cup of pecorino romano cheese yes it is and throughout the recipe we've switched all parmesan for pecorino romano it has a much more savory flavor but here it's actually going to add more of that meaty component to the sauce nobody's gonna go wow that is fishy cheesy sauce they're gonna go oh that's meaty where's the meat I'm ventric cheese in the sauce while you cook it I'm going to bring this up to a simmer and then reduce the heat to medium-low let that go for about 20 minutes I want you to move on down here I've got a taste test for you now in most cheese and tomato lasagnas they use ricotta cheese that's the base right I used to call it white cheese yeah I was a little girl because it has no flavor it's not great in a lasagne and has a little bit of a chalky texture so we're subbing in cottage cheese just plain ol cottage cheese the way it's treated to make those curds it actually gives it a bit more of a brighter and a little bit of a Tangier flavor now I must say I'm pretty skeptical about this because when I first saw this in this recipe I thought are you kidding me cottage cheese has more flavor than ricotta I mean they kind of look the same to me they're both just kind of milky tasting so I made Brigitte set up a tasting for me mm-hmm there's the ricotta right tastes like skim milk but in cheese form then here we have the cottage cheese mmm you know what I was wrong Tangier but it's also richer and creamier that's right well no snacking right now because we need to move back over here to our lasagna our sauce is bubbling nicely hmm and now we're going to move on to our famous cottage cheese filling here this is eight ounces of cottage cheese four more ounces of grated pecorino romano we also have a half a cup of have cream huh it's kind of like a bechamel but we don't have to cook it at all two garlic cloves this is 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper and then an unusual ingredient for lasagna one teaspoon of corn starts now a lot of times when you've got lasagna in the oven that's bubbling away what happens to the dairy components it starts to break and you end up with this kind of curdled mixture cornstarch is going to prevent that clever so just a little bit I just want to whisk it until I break up some of those curds there now join you when was the last time that we years early edge lasagna noodles and any recipe here these are so old-school from the 70s that's right well we're gonna use them today because we went with the no-boil noodles which we usually love but we didn't like them in this application remember no boil noodles are great because you can pack the lasagna with lots of meat and fillings and you still have room for noodles well when you take out the meat or any substantial amounts of vegetables the lasagna is about that thick so we need something with a little bit of heft a little bit of substance in the curly edge lasagna noodles are perfect so these are 14 early edge noodles we're not going to boil these instead we're going to soak them in boiling water just pour over until it's covered it's just going to soften the noodles just a little bit but it's not going to overcook them we're gonna let these sit until they're just pliable that's gonna take about 15 minutes and I'll go in there a couple of times with a paring knife just to make sure that they're not sticking together all right obviously they are out of the pan I had you drain them and then rinse them well and that was to get off any excess starch from the surface of the noodles and here I have the noodles but I do need to Pat them dry well because we don't want to put lots and lots of water into our lasagna now when it comes to fitting lasagna noodles and ham its Jenga it is Jenga I was thinking Rubik's Cube but you're absolutely right it's a little bit of Jenga you have to figure out exactly how they're going to fit so what I'm gonna do is take two of these noodles bring them up here to my cutting board and we're going to cut these right in half crosswise and these are going to help these noodles fit into the pan now the noodles are just gonna have to wait because the first layer is tomato sauce so I need one and a half cups of our tomato sauce right on the bottom of the dish I'm gonna go ahead and spread this out next up noodle time so we're gonna take three of the whole noodles we'll fit them into the pan lengthwise I like to do one on either side and one in the middle and since we don't want this little naked strip here of tomato sauce we're gonna fit one of our little noodles on this side now on top of the noodles goes half of our cottage cheese mixture and I'll do my best to spread this out into an even layer and this is where that heavy cream really helped it out that mixture now we're going to add our other cheese instead of mozzarella which again really doesn't have a lot of flavor we're going with fontina hmm yeah good Italian fontina really nice flavor but it still has great melt ability and now you want to make sure you buy Italian fontina and not Danish fontina because they're totally different animals Italian fontina it has a milder flavor and it's very smooth whereas Danish fontina well it'll knock you in the head next layer of noodles and I mentioned we're gonna stagger them so this time little noodle goes on this side and three more this way another 1/2 cups of our tomato sauce to this we want to add more of our fontina cheese another half cup little noodle on this side three more lengthwise see a pattern gone here I think I get it you're clever like that let's go with the rest of our cottage cheese mixture another 1/2 cup of our fontina cheese we are at our final layer dun-dun-dun short one on this side and then three more right over here we can put the rest of the sauce right on top no more measuring mmm-hmmm since this is the top layer I'll be a little bit tidier with it before I sprinkle on the remaining fontina I do want to mix it with an eighth of a teaspoon of corn starch we don't want any pockets of deer are you just sitting there on top can that milky appearance so the cornstarch is really going to help prevent that and one last final cheese that is a quarter cup of finely grated pecorino romano that's going to form a really beautiful crust on top I want to cover it with foil we're gonna spray the foil with a little bit of nonstick spray before I put it on so this is going in a 375-degree oven for about 35 minutes after that I'm going to increase the oven temperature to 500 degrees I do want to remove the foil and it's going to go back in there for another 10 minutes and you'll see that the top is going to be all beautifully Brown that's a little bad news yeah we're not gonna eat that right now no no way it is we want obviously the heat to subside we don't want it to be hot and bubbling but we also want those lasagna layers to kind of meld back together we cut into this it would just be a sloppy mess huh all right Joe it's been really long 20 minutes that one final thing to do I have some chopped basil Oh No about three tablespoons right at the ends I love the kind of the hills and valleys yeah at the lasagna all right so let's serve this now this serves about eight or two Lancaster's hello there we go oh it smells so good I'm gonna dig right in I like the way you think mm-hmm I love that the noodles aren't too overcooked either yeah it's super creamy very creamy the heavy cream the cottage cheese mm-hmm and that fontina Sozzani is killer I'm so glad you like it so for the best cheese and tomato lasagna we strip out all the meat and vegetables but that doesn't mean you're losing all the flavor as long as you choose the right ingredients for the sauce use crushed and diced canned tomatoes tomato paste and anchovies prevent the lasagna from drying out by cottage cheese instead of ricotta and old-fashioned curly edge noodles instead of those thin no-boil noodles so there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen the best recipe for cheese and tomato lasagna [Music] I've loved anchovies ever since I was a little kid and I have no problem eating them right from the tin so today's anchovy tasting is actually gonna be fun for me I'm glad you're excited to yes so this is almost like that game one of these things is not like the other so why don't you go ahead and taste this the packaging looks exactly the same but the processing is totally different typically anchovies are cured with salt these are cooked in the can with salted olive oil so they're never cured so they're more like a sardine almost exactly like a sardine yeah they're delicious mm-hmm they're just not anchovies as far as I'm concerned why don't you taste the three that actually do taste like anchovies and the big thing here is we're looking for them to be big flavor boosters we use anchovies not just in Caesar salad or on top of pizza but to increase the umami meaty savory notes and tomato sauce and beef stew even in chili a couple things I want you to pay attention to the longer they are cured the more likely you're going to taste the bones and they can be a little spindly a little crackly and a little hairy especially if you're using them whole now if you're gonna mince them and put them in a dressing it's not a big deal but when they are cured and the curing can be three months to twelve months in the salt the meaty section is contracting and that means the bones become more prominent the longer they're cured also you get more fishy flavors so something that's cured nine months or 12 months has a little bit of that funk to it most of our tasters were like too funky too much fish and they preferred the samples that were cured three to six months we found doesn't really matter where in the world they come from the number one source is Peru but we have Spanish Moroccan and Peruvian anchovies here that wasn't the big deal it was really about the fishy flavor which relates to the amount of curing time so any initial impressions huh well I definitely pick up differences and in fact I think I figured out which one I buy as I mentioned I'm a huge anchovy fan and so this one is my favorite the texture is supple and silky the flavors not too overpowering a little bit of salt a little bit of fish nicely well-rounded if I'm right this one has a little fork that comes with it it's Anatol do know your so this one is my all-time favorite okay now these two are similar they're dryer and texture not as supple this one is good it's a little bit saltier than the one I like okay I've got a nice straight flavor this one it's pretty funky you have to be a serious fish lover to love this it's almost going off into fish sauce land which I like but I could see a lot of people not liking that alright so where do you want to start you want to see how well you've done you think you know what you this is my guy Oh My heavens Juliet that's my guy so this is Ortiz this is Spanish it's cured on the lower end in terms of time we like them it's also the most expensive it's almost $13 for that little jar I know glad you like that man is it good though but they were our number two choice let's see what you thought about the other ones and where you ended up this is my next choice that was the winner so this is King Oscar basically has the same amount of anchovies in the tin as in the jar you like but it is one-fifth high-priced to 79 and substantial weed fault like they were not cured too long so the bones weren't too prominent wasn't too fishy was our favorite and this one given what you say is probably cured longer than the other two your palate is working very well this is the 10th oh this was cured almost a year had the strongest fish flavor it was our least favorite of the traditional anchovies now let's come back to where we started to the myth oddball this is wild planet and here is that if you read the label it says anchovy and extra virgin olive oil and you think this is going to be like your typical anchovy totally not yeah evening yes I mean it's fine if you want to eat it right from the can there on a piece of toast but it is not going to build the amount of flavor because that's 1/10 the salt so delicious but not really what we consider an anchovy correct so there you have it when buying anchovies by the king Oscar anchovies at just 2 dollars and 79 cents or if you want to spin a little more and have a really great anchovy go for the $13 Ortiz in the world of ingredients garlic can be a real boy especially in recipes where it takes center stage like garlic bread so I'm here with Keith who's going to show us how to harness the power of garlic you're right garlic can be a bully Brigid but I'm here today to show you how to tame that aggressive flavor and make a really good garlic bread all right the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna make garlic butter we're gonna start with a microplane and our garlic and we're gonna get a really really fine paste that's gonna cook out really well and won't leave little bits behind we're gonna need a tablespoon of garlic and that's gonna take four or five cloves to get there you can see I have a really nice fine paste here when you rupture the cell walls of garlic you build a compound called Alison and that's guard flavor that's the bully and garlic so what we want to do is we want to build that Alison up but then we want to stop it so what we're gonna do is we're gonna cook it the quickest way to do that is just to put it in some melted butter I have four tablespoons of unsalted melted butter here and we're just gonna put this in the microwave for a minute get it up above 150 and it will stop the production of Alison and stop the garlic flavor from building so a minute in the microwave I'm gonna stir it halfway through and it should be bubbling generally around the edges when we're done okay Bridget so we've microwaved this garlic for a minute we've killed Alison this will provide us most of our garlic flavor and our garlic bread but we really wanted more complex garlic flavor so we're gonna add more garlic flavor to this garlic bread using garlic powder garlic powder I know our garlic bread the dehydration process creates those long roasted sweet flavors but with garlic powder we found you have to add a little bit of water this is a teaspoon of water and a teaspoon of garlic powder it's like bloomin spices you wake up that Alison you kind of pick up those slow roasted garlic notes now garlic powder has been a little bit of a controversial ingredient here in the Test Kitchen when to use it and when not to use it as always the question but here's something port shopping for garlic powder garlic powder and granulated garlic at the supermarket are basically the same thing they're dehydrated garlic and the difference is in the texture garlic powder tends to be well counter like and granulated garlic has a coarser texture but we found that you can sub one for one in just about any recipe so we have our garlic slurry here now we just need to finish up our garlic butter in testing there are two kind of avenues for garlic bread that that recipes went through they used melted butter or softened butter but we had problems with both of those we wanted something in between what we're gonna do is we're gonna take more softened butter this is another four tablespoons of softened butter and we're gonna add our hot melted butter here with the garlic I'm gonna add an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper little heat to the background which is always yes and a half teaspoon of salt that's just gonna bring out those garlic flavors we're gonna stir this together and we're gonna have the perfect consistency of this paste kind of looks like garlic baby food yes it does I was thinking garlic frosting so this is gonna be the perfect consistency to spread on our bread okay Bridget we have our garlic butter here now we're gonna focus on the bread and here I have a supermarket Italian loaf which is about 12 inches long that's gonna give us the perfect consistency for our garlic bread we're just gonna have to score exactly pretty simple you would think that you would want an artisanal loaf with a crust and an open crumb but it really didn't work for garlic bread you can see this really nice plush interior no big holes it's gonna really hold on to that garlic butter gonna be delicious we're gonna spoon some of this down the center of these loaves and I find it easier just to kind of spoon a channel right down the middle and then you can kind of go back with a spatula spread it out a little bit evening a lot of recipes we found use a 350 degree oven which is fairly low but we found that it would drive the bread out we want to retain some of that moisture in the bread so we're gonna use a fairly high oven 450 degrees for three to four minutes please tell me that's not done because that is pale it's very pale I admit if you just toast it all the way you don't get a very good crust we wanted to develop a significant crust much like you would with a grilled cheese sandwich she have a really thick crust in kind of a moist tender interior so the best way we found to do that was to take this garlic bread and flip it over on our sheet tray now we're gonna take a second sheet tray we're just gonna push down on this really gently and we're gonna go back in the oven for five to ten minutes with this room baking sheet on top to help provide weight and have a good surface contact on the bottom that's a good idea okay Bridget it's been about eight minutes and our garlic bread is ready it smells great it's gone I can smell it but I can't see it so here's the big reveal Bridget hello oh look at us okay it's perfectly even color from very edge to edge it's gonna be perfect and that golden brown crust should be audible oh and it is look at this everything is perfect here you've got that layer of garlic right at the top there but the interior is still nice and soft I have to say every single part of this bread is about hitting it just right so you had that fresh garlic you brought it up and then tamed it back down a little bit of garlic powder that was perfect because it really does add that almost roasted flavor to this and then I love that the texture is compact but it's not too fluffy and it's not to deaths no more bullies no more bullies I love it well we tamed the garlic bully and built a layered and lovable garlic flavor start by microwaving grated fresh garlic with butter and then combined it with garlic powder cayenne and more butter I'm not at this time to make a smooth paste spread that aromatic paste on the cut sides of an Italian loaf then bake it cut side up then flip the bread cut side down and press it with a baking sheet to compact the fluffy interior and ensure a golden brown crisp crust so there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen really really good garlic bread and you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website America's Test Kitchen calm thank you thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 290,367

Rating: 4.8752899 out of 5

Keywords: cheese and tomato lasagna, anchovies, garlic bread, garlic butter, homemade garic bread, italian bread, garlic toast, cheese lasagna, meatless lasagna, cottage cheese lasagna, no meat lasagna, america's test kitchen, cooking, italian food, italian, lasagna, bread, pasta, vegetarian, recipes, cheese, cooking show, public television

Id: dRMvHVE4b34

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/dropbluelettuce]

Complex garlic flavor.

[u/Jase7891]

It’s my go-to garlic bread recipe right now. I’ll triple the recipe and freeze loaves covered in garlic butter for easy prep.

[u/Liverbones]

Love their recipes