Lasagna
Lasagna is a meal I didn’t make very often while our family was growing up…and there are a couple of very good reasons. While always yummy, it was a lot of work, a ton of work!! And if the amount of work and the difficulty of working with ‘literally’ boiling hot slippery lasagna noodles wasn’t hard enough, there was the problem with inconsistent results. In other words, all that work and pain to only end up with a ‘runny’ lasagna.
But thank goodness :), Not anymore!! Lasagna is now easy to make and the results are consistent! This is because of the invention of ‘no-boil’ lasagna noodles. All I do is make a simple meat sauce and then layer the sauce between these uncooked lasagna noodles, cottage cheese and mozzarella. Actually, it’s probably good that these ‘no-boil’ noodles didn’t exist when our family was younger, otherwise I might have made it so often that everyone could have become sick and tired of lasagna.
Wait a second…? Is that actually possilbe?? Can anyone ever become sick and tired of lasagna??? I’m willing to give it a try…
Lasagna Recipe
Ingredients:
2 boxes ‘No-Boil’ lasagna noodles (I used 1 1/2 boxes of “Catelli Express Lasagne noodles”)
2 lb extra lean ground beef
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large sweet yellow onions
5 cloves garlic
4c pasta sauce (I used 1 3/4 of the sauce from the jars pictured)
4c 1% cottage cheese
4c grated mozzarella cheese
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 F degrees.
Gather all ingredients
Chop onion, add to large pot with olive oil. Saute until lightly browned. Add crushed garlic and saute for 3 - 5 more minutes.
Add ground beef to above pot and cook until meat begins to brown.
Add pasta sauce and heat through.
Turn off meat sauce and gather together other ingredients for layering.
Spread 1/2 cup of sauce on bottom of each 9 X 13 inch baking dish. Top with noodles (3 lengthwise and a broken one across the end…so entire layer is covered in noodles), then add 3/4c sauce, layer of mozzarella and 1c cottage cheese (In photos above, I thinly sliced the mozzarella for layering…which saved time from grating). Repeat layers to top of dish ending with a layer of noodles and sauce.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake in preheated oven for 45min (It should be bubbling on the sides…don’t hesitate to stick a fork into the lasagna to make certain the noodles are cooked through.)
Uncover, sprinkle with 1c grated mozzarella cheese. Bake for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and lightly browned.
Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
Note: The photo below shows what happens when your impatient, which I was, to dig into a lasagna before it’s had time to cool…and harden a little :)…but still super yummy!! But if you’re like me and can’t wait…please be careful because it’s piping hot!!
