Lasagna with Meat Sauce
Prep Time: 35 minutes | Cook Time: 55 minutes | Total Time: 1 hor, 30 minutes | Serves: 10-12
There is nothing like a homemade lasagna. Home cooks usually make one for a church potluck dinner, a family with a new baby, someone close recovering from health issues, and even just because it’s so gosh-darn yummy.
Some people would say it’s an ultimate comfort food. Multiple websites rated this very common Italian dish #2 in the list of top comfort foods. Thrillist.com has a very entertaining article on each state’s top comfort food. I’m not going to list them, but one that made me laugh out loud was Nevada. While every other state had a single item noted, Nevada had, “Anything from a buffet.”
Making your own sauce really can turn a good lasagna into a WOW lasagna. If you choose to use a jar, go with a little higher priced one. They are generally better-quality ingredients. I have tasted some jarred marinara sauces that were almost as good as restaurant-quality sauces (yes, they were the pricier ones).
This lasagna is no wimpy lasagna either. A homemade red sauce filled with chunks of ground beef and Italian sausage and herbs is what sets this dish off apart from others. The ricotta cheese is flavored with nutmeg, two cheeses, and parsley. Bubbling, gooey, melted mozzarella cheese blankets this pan of mouth-watering deliciousness. Serve with warm, toasted bread (check out my Buffalo Bread) and roasted veggies or a salad for a complete and completely wonderful meal.
I personally like the taste and texture of fresh mozzarella (…another attempt I’ve put on my list: making my own fresh mozzarella!). You can find fresh mozzarella in your specialty cheese sections. It’s practically impossible to grate. You can lay slices of fresh mozzarella on the top before baking. It would be delicious.
Enjoy!
Lasagna with Meat Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 pound Italian sausage, sweet, mild, or hot
- 1 medium red onion, diced
- 1 tablespoon garlic, finely minced
- 6 ounces tomato paste
- 2 28-ounce cans whole, peeled plum tomatoes
- 2 teaspoons dried Mediterranean oregano
- 1 tablespoon beef base dissolved in 1/2 cup hot water
- 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped or torn
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- kosher salt, to taste
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 16 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 3/4 pound lasagna noodles, cooked according to package directions; salt your water
Ricotta Mixture:
- 32 ounces ricotta cheese
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
- 1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, more or less or to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease a 9×13” deep lasagna pan and set aside.
- In a stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, brown both meats with onion and garlic until no pink remains. Drain and return the meat mixture to the pan.
- Add the tomato paste, oregano, salt, pepper, beef base, basil, tomatoes (crushing by hand as you add them) along with the juices from the cans, and the balsamic vinegar.
- Taste and add salt and pepper. Simmer uncovered on low heat, stirring occasionally for 20 minutes.
- While the sauce is simmering, combine all the ricotta mixture ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
- To assemble, spread about ¾ cup of the meat sauce in the bottom of the greased pan. Top with 3 lasagna noodles. Spread about a third of the ricotta mixture evenly over the noodles. Top with approximately 1 ½ cups of the meat sauce. Layer with 3 more noodles, and continue to make layers until your ingredients are used up, ending with a sauce layer on top. (Depending on the size of your pan, that could be 2 or 3 more layers.)
- Evenly sprinkle the shredded mozzarella over the top of the lasagna.
- Cover the lasagna with aluminum foil and place in the oven for 40 minutes. (You can spray the foil with a non-stick cooking spray so that the cheese doesn’t stick to the foil as the it melts.)
- After 40 minutes, remove the foil and continue to bake for another 15 minutes. (If you’d like the top more browned, turn broiler on, but stay close by and keep an eye on it, so a lovely browning doesn’t turn into scorched cheese.)
- Remove the lasagna from the oven and allow to stand at room temperature for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Serve warm.
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