Recipe from Lil Luna – All Things Good: https://lilluna.com/easy-lasagna-recipe/
Time: 1.5 hr
Servings: 7 lunches + 7 dinners
Rating: 4/5
INGREDIENTS
1 TB vegetable oil
3 tsp minced garlic
2 TB basil (fresh)
6 c tomato sauce (1/2 canned, 1/2 pasta sauce)
1 lb beef
1 lb pork
16 oz sour cream
2 c cottage cheese
1 c parmesan cheese
1 lb mozzarella cheese sliced
1 pkg lasagna noodles (for faster cook time, use the no boil variety)
parmesan cheese to taste
salt and pepper to taste
Optional
thyme, oregano
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
INSTRUCTIONS
Building the layers
1. Chop garlic, basil and any other additional veggies.
2. In a large pan, saute garlic for 2-3min with spices. Add in other veggies and cook until lightly browned and soft.
3. Add all tomato sauce to pan and stir. Salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 10min.
4. While the sauce simmers, brown the beef and pork. Add the meat to the sauce when done.
5. In a bowl, combine sour cream, cottage cheese, and parmesan.
6. Slice mozzerella into slices.
Assembling the layers
7. Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
8. Construct layers in 9×13″ pan. A 9×9″ pan and bread tin also have approximately the same volume.
parmasean garnish
sauce
lasagna noodle
sour cream mixture
mozzarella
sauce
lasagna noodle
sour cream mixture
mozzarella
sauce
lasagna noodle
sauce
Cooking
9. Regular lasagna noodles: Bake for 25min with Al foil, remove and bake for another 20min. (No boil lasagna noodles: Bake for 25-30min)
Thoughts
The sour cream mixture dominates a little too much for my liking. I wish there was a 1:3 parts ratio of the creamy mixture to meat sauce.
This is fast to put together and makes a lot of food with little ingredient prep required. It’s also easy to add extra veggies or to keep it simple. I might try another lasagna recipe with a little more complexity and find a happy balance. Like adding sausage might be a fun meat to substitute.
Pro tip with the mozzarella, I stacked it a solid layer on the first layer and ran out of cheese for the second layer. Space the mozzarella rounds out a little more so there’s an even amount of cheese
After 25min in the oven, the lasagna noodles were crunchy. And this is when I discovered that ‘no boil’ lasagna noodles are a thing, and a thing that I did not buy. But crisis adverted, cooking for another 20min in the oven with Al foil over the pans solved that problem.
Also, when missing a 9×13″ pan, a 9×9″ corning dish and a bread pan together are about the same volume. Just snap the lasagna noodles to fit the new container shapes.