- We are sorted.
A group of mates from London exploring the newest
and best in a world of food whilst trying
to have a few laughs along the way.
We've got chefs, we've got normals
and a whole world of stuff for you to explore
that everything we do starts with you.
- Hello I'm Mike, this is Ben.
- And today we're doing our favourite thing ever, pasta,
but layers of pasta with stuff in between.
- In front of us are three different lasagnes,
they have different cooking methods,
they have different pros, but which one's best?
- Well, we will compare them at the end, but first,
we're going to teach you how to make each and everyone,
and J, you're going first. What you going to cook us?
- I'm cooking you a quick lasagne.
- And how am I going to make you a quick lasagne,
I hear you ask.
By cheating, every single step of the way.
Here's what we're going to use:
sausages
olive oil
fennel seeds
garlic
and chilli flakes.
For my sauce, all I'm going to use is
tomato purée,
a stock cube and some water.
I'm going to make a herby ricotta with:
parmesan
ricotta
basil, parsley
and some fresh lasagne sheets.
And all three of us are going to be using this
magnificent beast.
Cheat number 1: rather than using a traditional beef mince
for my meat, I'm going to use sausages.
They already have a load of flavour packed in to them
and then we're going to add some more flavour too.
So, I'm going to heat some oil in a pan
and then squeeze in my sausage meat,
add some fennel seeds and let that cook off
for about 5 minutes.
That will give me time to mince 2 cloves of garlic,
and then I can add that and some chilli flakes
into my sausage mix too.
Cheat number 2: my sauce.
Now we could spend hours sweating down onions
and garlic and tomato, no we don't want any of that.
Tomato purée, chicken stock cube, water
into a pan with our sausages
and let it all simmer down by about half
and you have a really rich sauce.
You'll notice I'm not going to season any of this,
stock cubes are already really salty
and the sausages have already got perfect seasoning
through them anyway. Job done.
Cheat number 3: now we could go to all of the effort
of making a beautiful bechamel sauce but
who's got time for that.
We're going to make a herby ricotta instead.
So, into our food processor with a knife blade,
we're going to add ricotta, parmesan, basil and some parsley
and blitz it all up so there's no lumps of parmesan left,
and the herbs have made the ricotta
a lovely sort of green colour.
Cheat number 4, and believe me,
you're gonna like this one:
we're not gonna put our lasagne in the oven.
Which breaks all the rules of lasagne.
We're basically going to take some fresh lasagne sheets,
put them in boiling salted water for 2 to 3 minutes
to cook through, drain them
and then serve them on the plate along with
our sausage sauce, and our herby ricotta.
- [All] Ahhhhhhh
- I tell you what, an open lasagne
always, I think, looks quite fancy.
- The question is, does it need the meat?
How about we try vegan lasagne?
Nah, I pushed boundaries a little bit,
that might be a little bit too far.
- Trust me
- Yeah, that's right, I'm making a vegan lasagne.
I'm simply removing the meat
and replacing that with lentils,
but the really smart bit is,
I'm using butternut squash for my be bechamel sauce.
And this is what we're going to need:
butternut squash, cashew nuts,
some olive oil
I've got onion, garlic, carrots, celery,
and some rosemary,
a vegetable stock, chopped tomatoes,
and tomato purée.
Then some lentils and some lasagne sheets
to layer it all up.
I'm also using the same machine as Jamie,
but with a food processor and a blender.
For me, the star of this lasagne is the bechamel sauce.
Now, obviously we can't use butter and milk.
What we're using is cashew nuts and butternut squash.
It has butter in the title but there's no butter in it.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to put my cashew nuts
in a bowl and soak them in water overnight.
Or you can speed it along and use boiling water,
but keep it just to an hour.
Next up, your beautiful butternut squash.
Now the worst thing about these is peeling them,
so we're not going to do that.
We're going to chop it straight in half,
scoop out the seeds,
season it with olive oil, salt and pepper,
bung it in the oven for an hour at 200 degrees.
The perfect tomato sauce, it needs a strong base.
We've lots of layers, which is why we're using
some celery, carrots, onions and some garlic.
We're going to peel all those, stick them
in my food processor and use a course grating disc.
This will get it nice and small so we
can fry it off in olive oil.
Right, let's crack on with our bechamel.
You wanna swap out the food process for a blender.
And then pour in your cashews with its water,
and then scoop out the flesh of your butternut squash
and add that in as well.
Season it with salt and pepper and give it a blitz
with a tablespoon of olive oil, so it all comes together.
With the base veg now softened,
it's time to add the rest of stuff.
We got some water,
two tins of tomatoes,
stock cube, tomato purée,
and, of course, your lentils.
Now, it may look like a lot of liquid in there,
but all that flavour will get absorbed into the lentils.
You want to bring this to a simmer,
and cook for about 45 minutes.
You might add a little bit of water,
to stop it catching at the bottom.
Now it's just time to layer this up,
we're going for lentils at the bottom,
then some lasagne sheets.
These are eggless, as are most lasagne sheets,
but check before you buy them.
Then your butternut squash bechamel,
and then, same again, same again...it's a lasagne.
That then goes into the oven at 180, for 30 minutes.
- [All] Wahhhh, ahhhh.
- Come on better than that, then come on, ahhh?
- Well, it smells better than it looks.
- Cheers
- But, this is the ultimate lasagne,
no questions asked.
I'm calling this the all day lasagne,
because it's an effort, a real effort.
But, it is worth it.
I'm gonna use beef short rib,
gonna make an amazing sauce and ragout around it,
with loads of root vegetables,
carrots, celery, garlic, onion and rosemary.
Add tomatoes, tomato purée, stock and white wine
to make an incredible sauce that cooks down.
I'm also making my own pasta with semolina, flour, water.
And an incredible bechamel,
butter, flour, milk, flavoured with two cheeses:
Parmesan and Tallegio.
Gorgeous beef short rib.
I'm gonna sear it off in a really hot pan
and a little bit of oil, to get a bit of colour on it,
whilst we start the base to the sauce.
The base to my sauce you've seen before.
Exactly the same as Barry's.
Onion, carrot, celery, garlic,
peeled, added to the food processed with the knife blade
and blitzed up to a paste.
Also, don't waste all of that beef fat.
That goes into a pan with oil and rosemary.
Jamie used fresh lasagne sheets,
Barry used dried lasagne sheets,
we're making our own pasta, so while the veg sweats off,
in the bowl with a dough hook, knead together
semolina, zero-zero flour or double 00 flour and water.
All the weights measurements available down below.
Don't forget a pinch of salt.
To finish the sauce, when all the blitzed up veg
have softened, about 5 minutes or so,
bung in the white wine, it's quite a lot.
You want that to reduce by half before adding in
tomatoes, tomato purée, stock cube
and then put your beef rib pieces back in.
As soon as all those tomatoes come have back up to a simmer,
lid on and into an oven, 160 degrees Celsius for 3 hours,
until you can see the bone, the meat shrunk back
and it will pull nicely.
After plenty of kneading, the pasta should be really soft.
It's no-egg pasta, so it is slightly softer than normal,
but it should be really, really elasticy.
Wrap it in cling film. Put it in the fridge. Rest.
With the pasta rested, we're now gonna roll it out
into sheets of lasagne,
so whack on the lasagne roller attachment,
dust it with flour, and then you want to roll out
not too thin, to about 4 out of the 9 setting.
And then we can actually layer out, and dry out
at room temperature for several hours,
whilst our beef continues to cook.
In Jamie's quick version, he skipped the bechamel altogether
and blitzed up ricotta.
Barry made something that was dairy-free
for the vegan option.
We're going all out.
Butter, melt into a pan,
turned into a roux with flour,
and then add in the milk a little bit at a time.
It's whole milk so it's super rich.
We're gonna season it with grated nutmeg, and bay leaf,
salt and pepper, and let it bubble away.
And then we're gonna go in with two different cheeses.
Talleggio, which is a gorgeous, soft, smelly,
sticky Italian cheese, and a big chunk of parmesan.
For speed, we're gonna quickly grate it up
using the fine grating disc in the food processor.
Half is going into the sauce,
half we'll hold back, to sprinkle over the lasagne
before it goes into the oven.
And then the last thing to do before we layer
this lasagna up, is to grab those gorgeous short rib
and literally remove the bones,
and it will just slide straight out.
Rip up all the rest the meat into one sauce.
You can skim off any fat that might be on the top.
And then layer it, meat, pasta, sauce, and keep repeating
all the way up into a dish.
Finishing with that final bit of parmesan.
And that is an all day, all out lasagne.
All it needs is half an hour in a hot oven,
so the parmesan goes lovely and golden,
the pasta layers cook through.
You can do that straight away,
or you can put it in the fridge and cook it
the next day so the flavours get even better.
Up to you, half an hour, job done.
- Yeah
- Ahhh
- Yeah
- I don't think we need to taste these two now,
cause my mind is purely focused on that one.
- No, it's all in the tasting and fennel sausage
could be the way forward.
- [All] Cheers
- Well, fennel and sausage is always a good combination.
A little kick of cheese is quite nice.
- It's definitely delicately balanced.
It's not overwhelming either.
- Now in no way would I claim this is traditional
- I think that's probably for the best.
- But is it delicious? Yes it is.
And is it quick. Yes it is
- Twenty, thirty minutes, job done and that
herby ricottay thing is absolutely delicious.
- You know what, I don't miss the bechamel sauce either,
which I never thought I'd say.
- No?
- Kinda lucky, cause you not got one in there either.
Right, let's dig into this one, and shall we just say,
this is vegan, I'm about to put it on a plate that isn't,
but, hey, we're not.
- [All] Cheers
- What you get is the tang from quite an intense
tomatoey rounded, stewy, ragout-y kind of thing,
but also a sweetness from that kind of squashy cashew nut.
- Now for a bechamel sauce with no dairy,
how creamy is that sauce?
- It has all the texture of lasagne, and I mean
the different textures that you get from the pasta,
from a traditional ragu or meat sauce,
and it has that cheeseeness to it as well on top.
That's astonishing. All right
- Yep
- We've had the cheat.
- We've had the vegan and we have the real one.
- [All] Cheers
- I don't think there's many lasagnes you could serve
as a canapé, cause honestly, one mouthful is enough
to take you to heaven.
It's not enough
- Honestly, the flavour..
- It's enough to take you.
- I knew this one was gonna be good before it came to table
because the stuff we had left over has all disappeared
and everybody has said, this is the best lasagne
they've ever eaten.
- It's not just the meatiness of the meat'
It's the nutmeg and the bay. It's the tallegio.
It's the little touches, the nice cheeses,
the seasoning with the nutmeg.
It's just so good.
- Barry, which is your favourite lasagne?
- It is standout, but I would also say the butternut and cashew of
that is brilliant and I've also loved
fennel and sausage together, so there's
- They all have their place
- No, this one.
- That is my ultimate lasagne. I've never had
a vegan lasagne that good before
and I've never made a lasagne that quick before.
- Tell us what you think.
Comment down below, which would you most like to taste now,
which would you most like to cook.
You can get all the recipes down below.
- I think that final lasagne at least deserves
a massive thumbs up, so if you like the look of it
then you should like this video.
- I would go as far to say, possibly the best dish
we've made in the entire three recipes
compared this series.
- I completely agree with that.
- Just cut yourself a small portion.
- Thank you very much for watching.
Make sure you reach out with a comment,
by commenting down below. We read all of them
and we will try and reply to as many as possible.
And we will see you every Wednesday, every Sunday
at 4:00pm UK time.
- That's what I was gonna say.
- As we mentioned, we don't just make
top quality YouTube videos.
We've built the sorted club where we use the best things
we've learnt to create stuff that's hopefully interesting
and useful to other food lovers.
Check it out if you're interested.
Thank you for watching and we'll see you in a few days.
- How many lasagnes do you think you've had in your life?
- 3,412