The Golden Boy Lasagna Thread

[The Golden Boy]

I learned how to make lasagna the other day. I've been afraid of making it, as I've heard that it's complicated and it takes forever... My wife showed me how to make it and it's turned out really good the 3 times I made it, it's nowhere near as difficult as I'd feared, doesn't take as long as I'd feared, so thought I'd share.

The first step in the creation of your lasagna masterpiece is making sure you have proper tunage in the kitchen. I put some old computer speakers on a shelf above the sink- there's a switched outlet up there, and I ran the cable down to my iPod.





Once that's taken care of, get your ingredients in order. As this was a weeknight, I was kind of pressed for time, and I didn't prepare as well as I should have and forgot a few things. I like lots of meat, cheese and mushrooms and as a little something extra- a friend's wife makes her lasanga with peas- it sounds goofy, but it's awesome. I'm also lazy, so I'm using a jar of spaghetti sauce...

So...

Spaghetti sauce (I'm using the 3 lb Prego Traditional)
2 tubs of ricotta cheese
Package of shredded spinach
2 8oz containers of mushrooms (I'm using one white, one baby portabellas)
Red Pepper Flakes
Garlic Powder
Ground Pepper
Sea Salt
Just shy of 2 lbs of Italian Sausage
(not pictured)
6 cups of Mozarella cheese (I'd go for 8 next time)
3 Eggs
Peas (frozen is great)
Lasanga noodles




Slice up your mushrooms, dump half the sauce into a pan, the mushrooms, and dump the rest of the sauce over the top. Put it on a med/low heat to cook the mushrooms down. If you do it with peas- like I forgot to, you add the frozen peas to thaw and cook into the sauce here.





Then brown your sausage- We only have small non-stick pans, so I had to do it in two stages.





Then add it to the sauce






Then you dump the 2 tubs of ricotta into a big bowl. Dump a bunch of garlic powder, crushed pepper, red pepper flakes, and sea salt into the ricotta. At this point, squeeze as much of the moisture as you can out of the thawed shredded spinach and add it to the ricotta.

Beat up 3 eggs and add them to the ricotta mix and mix it all up really really good. I just used a fork to stir it all up.

[The Golden Boy]

The glass pans we have in the house are not very deep, so we picked up one of those foil lasanga pans... I coated as much of the surface of the pan with olive oil, and laid down a thin layer of sauce at the bottom of the pan- I then laid out the noodles to cover as much of the pan area.





Cover the noodles with another layer of sauce, then put a layer of the ricotta mix on top of the sauce. Notice we're not cooking the noodles ahead of time- that's why you're putting a layer of sauce on each side of the noodles as you lay them in- the noodles soften up and cook during the baking process.




Then put a layer of Mozarella on top of the ricotta mixture, I'm trying to avoid putting the cheese to the sides of the pan to keep the cheese from sticking to the side of the pan.





At this point you start over again, a layer of sauce, noodle, sauce, ricotta, mozarella, sauce, noodle, sauce, and mozarella to finish it off.

Now you cover the lasagna with foil as tightly as possible and put it into an oven preheated to around 350 or slightly more. Cook for about an hour. I put it on another tray, covered with foil- as the lasagna is cooking, some of the stuff will leak out- rather than make a mess of your oven, it's easy to just peel the foil off the tray.

You want to seal it as well as possible because the noodles are cooking in there, and you want to keep as much moisture in there as possible for that.






After an hour, take the foil off and let it cook for another 5-10 minutes and pull it out of the oven and let it sit for a bit






Then Slice it up and chow!!!






OK, I'm not the best lasagna slicer ever...




The two mistakes I made in making the lasagna were forgetting the peas- and then only having 6 cups of Mozarella- I ended up a little short at the end covering the lasagna with cheese- I had to shred a brick of some marbled cheese we had in the fridge- I would have preferred it with Mozarella. I also should have put some Italian seasoning into the ricotta mixture as well.


You all should give it a shot- it's a lot of fun, and oh, so delicious!!!

[Mon Rominee]

Damn son, send all leftovers to my addy....

Serious tho, good looking lasagne....made some myself too, I love lasagne. Thanks for the step by step!!!!

Love, Garfield

[MCBTunes]

I'd say it looks damn good.

Lasagna is my favorite dish, my momma makes a mean lasagna, unfortunately I tend to either under or over cook it.

[Marcus Johnson]

Looks really fine. Never had it with peas, as far as I can recall.

Crusty bread and a green salad, you're in.

[freakonaleash]

Wonderful recipe, I would like to try it next time I make lasagne, which is a big favourite of mine!

[SuperDuck]

Ack! Mushrooms!

[peterbright]

Ship me the leftovers.

[The Golden Boy]

Originally Posted by peterbright

Ship me the leftovers.

nearly gone now...

Yeah, almost all 47 pounds of that lasagna are gone...

that's why I'm fat.

[The Golden Boy]

Originally Posted by SuperDuck

Ack! Mushrooms!

Did you ever meet Rob's upstairs neighbor?

He roasts up a pretty mean lasagna. And rib roast.

[SuperDuck]

Originally Posted by The Golden Boy

Did you ever meet Rob's upstairs neighbor?

He roasts up a pretty mean lasagna. And rib roast.

I've met him, but never had his food.

Also, on the contrary to your previous post, I think you're quite svelte.

[Mon Rominee]

Originally Posted by peterbright

Ship me the leftovers.

Hey! I called it first Buck-o

[XtreO]

Damn you cook fancy lasagna! When we have lasagna it's much less ingredients (I don't make it really, but mom makes it ever now and then ). It's white sauce (flour, butter, milk, spices), tomato sauce, meat (cut into the stuff on the pictures, have no idea what the English word is) and spagetthi-'plates' put in layers in a glass pan, with cheese on top.
I've always thought that is what 'lasagna' is, but I was seemingly wrong I wonder what other variations there is? Go on and post your way of making lasagna, I say!

[Bard2dbone]

I used to make a pretty good lasagna when I was young. It was a fairly traditional version. Then I got kind of bored with it and didn't make it for a while. Then I had a vegetarian lasagna and thought it was pretty awesome. So I started making veggie-sagna. It was great but I haven't made it in a year or two. I'll try to remember and post the recipe later.

[Toasted]

I would eat that, right now.

[MAJOR METAL]

Feel free to bring a few to this Sunday August 3rd will be the date for the International GTG hosted in metro NYC !

[will.i.am]

i made this yesterday!

[peterbright]

Ever consider becoming a luthier?