- Hey guys.
Today, we are gonna tackle lasagna.
Now, lasagna is one of my favorite recipes,
especially this time of year.
It makes for a great Sunday night dinner.
Now, it's also one of those recipes
that can take you all day to put together.
They really can be labor-intensive, but not this one.
I'm gonna show you how to multi-task, to make this recipe
a lot quicker, and show you some of the tips and tricks
I found throughout making this a few times
to speed it up a bit.
So, let me show you how to put it together.
The first thing you wanna do is prepare the meat sauce.
In a large stockpot, you're gonna add
two tablespoons of olive oil,
one cup of diced onion,
half a cup of diced carrot,
and a third of a cup of diced celery.
You can go ahead and season that with
a little salt and pepper to taste,
and then you wanna saute those vegetables
just until they're nice and tender, and fragrant.
At that point, you're gonna add
a half a pound of ground beef.
Now, traditionally a meat sauce like this
would have a combination of ground beef,
ground veal, and ground pork.
But for us here in the States,
it can be really hard to find ground veal.
Instead, my little cheat is to use
a half a pound of Italian sausage.
What I like about it is, it's filled with lots
of herbs and spices, and is really flavorful too.
You're just gonna cut the sausage out of the casing,
and add that to your meat sauce.
Then to that, you're gonna add
a half a teaspoon of salt,
and then because, for me, I can never have enough spices,
I like to add a few of my own Italian spices
to this mix as well.
So I will do two teaspoons of Italian seasoning.
And then I also like to add
a quarter teaspoon of fennel seeds.
Now, it's not something you need to go out and buy
if you don't have fennel seeds:
they can be expensive, it's like four dollars a bottle.
But if you have it in the spice rack,
go ahead and add it, because it will add
a really nice anise flavor to the meat.
Then you wanna brown both meats,
and I would definitely go in there with a wooden spoon
and cut it up, make sure that the meats are combining.
Once your meat is fully cooked through,
you're gonna add a cup of white wine.
Now if you don't drink, you could swap the wine
for a cup of chicken broth, or a cup of vegetable broth.
You just wanna let the meat simmer in the broth
or your wine, just until it reduces down
and you don't see that much liquid.
So about a third.
Then you're going to add a can of diced tomatoes
and a can of tomato sauce.
Then you're also gonna add a quarter cup of tomato paste,
just to give it a really nice, rich tomato flavor.
And then the final step is to add
two cloves of minced garlic.
Then you can just stir that up,
making sure that all those flavors are incorporated,
and then we are going to set that aside on simmer
for 30 minutes.
Now don't worry, we have some other things
that we can do during that time,
and what will end up happening is,
once we're ready for the tomato sauce,
the tomato sauce will be ready.
Now we're gonna make the second part of this recipe:
the bechamel sauce.
Now, there are some debates that I have with my father,
who is an Italian-American, about lasagna.
And he swears that lasagna is not lasagna
unless it has ricotta cheese in it.
I prefer a bechamel sauce, especially with
a meat-based lasagna like this.
But I wanna know, all of my Italian subscribers:
is ricotta cheese traditional for lasagna?
Come on, Vincenzo, I know you're watching.
You need to tell me: is this traditional or not?
I know you'll give me the real deal.
So in a large skillet, we're gonna add
three tablespoons of butter.
Once that starts to melt down and get foamy,
you're gonna add three tablespoons of flour.
And you're gonna mix that flour up with a whisk,
allowing it to cook for about a minute.
At that point, we are going to slowly add
three cups of milk, whisking all the while.
You just wanna let your sauce simmer,
and as it simmers, it will start to also thicken.
This is what we want: we want
a really nice, thick, velvety sauce.
Once it reaches that stage, we're going to add
one teaspoon of salt,
a little pinch of nutmeg,
and then, this isn't very traditional, but I do like to add
two teaspoons of fresh thyme
into my bechamel sauce, because what will happen
is it'll start to infuse that bechamel sauce
with this really beautiful, savory flavor.
Then you're also gonna add
two cloves of minced garlic.
And then you're just gonna whisk that together
and you'll see you have this beautiful sauce on your hands.
By the time you went through all of this,
with the chopping and the mincing, and the whisking,
your tomato sauce will be ready.
So, you can set that aside.
Now you have your two sauces ready to go,
and now we are going to talk about
the most important part: the noodles.
Typically, with lasagna, what is so labor-intensive
are the noodles, because you have to end up
boiling the noodles, letting them dry, patting them down,
and it can take a ton of time.
Yes, there are the no-boil noodles,
and those are good: if you're in a pinch,
I think that those actually work okay.
What I don't really love about them
is that they soak up a lot of the moisture,
so you end up with a noodle that gets
really sort of inflated, and then sucks up all of the sauce,
so you can end up having a really dry lasagna.
What I love instead, and it works like a charm,
and there's no boiling needed, are the fresh lasagna sheets.
They will give you a much lighter lasagna,
and it is ten times easier because
there is no boiling needed.
Even if the package says to boil it for a few minutes,
you really don't need to, because all of the sauce
is going to actually boil these noodles in the oven,
because it ends up sitting in there for an hour.
It works perfectly. Not to worry.
You're gonna get out a lasagna pan,
and you do wanna make sure that it's nicely greased,
just so that our noodles aren't gonna stick to the bottom.
And we are gonna take a nice, generous ladle
of our bechamel sauce, and put that on the bottom.
Then you're gonna add a layer of the lasagna noodles.
Then you're gonna take a full ladle of meat sauce
and add it to each noodle.
So four quadrants of meat sauce.
On top of the meat sauce, you're gonna do
a quarter cup of the bechamel sauce on each quadrant.
And then here comes the cheese: you're gonna add
a half a cup of freshly grated Italian-blend cheese.
I think that's the best one to get, 'cause you get
a lot of flavor and lot of gooey-ness.
Then you're gonna repeat this process two more times.
So, you wanna have three layers.
And then on your final layer, you're gonna end up with
the meat sauce, the bechamel sauce,
and instead of a half a cup of cheese,
you're gonna put a full cup of cheese.
I know, it sounds like a lot of cheese,
but you'll thank me in the end
when you have a nice, gooey, bubbly lasagna.
And then the final step is just to put
a little freshly cracked pepper
and a little bit more Italian seasoning on top.
You're gonna place this in
a 325 degree Fahrenheit oven
for about 50 to 55 minutes.
One of the things about this lasagna is,
once you start to cut into it,
and I would really recommend cutting it down the middle,
and then cutting it across, because you're basically
just looking for those lasagna noodle seams:
that will make it really easy to cut.
Then cut those quadrants in half.
This lasagna may not get awards
for the prettiest-looking thing,
but I am telling you,
it is the most delicious-tasting thing.
So don't worry if it's a little flopsy-mopsy:
that's part of it's charm.
To serve, I like to pair this lasagna
with a tossed green salad
and a delicious glass of red wine.
One of my new favorite sources for wine,
if you guys don't already know about it,
is wink... do you know about this company?
It is a wine subscription box
where you sign up and you give all your flavor profiles
and then every month you get
four new bottles of wine to try.
So if you like wine, and you wanna know more about it,
I will leave all the information in the description.
There you have it: one of my favorite Sunday night dinners,
a classic homemade lasagna.
I hope you guys give this one a try,
and let me know what you think.
I think you will find lasagna is well worth the effort
when you take the time to make it from scratch.
Alright, you guys, I hope you subscribe
for more quick and easy recipes.
And I will see you back here next week for another one.
Until then, bye!
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