Today, on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be sharing my favorite
lasagna recipe. Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here,
and today I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested,
well researched, and perfected recipe. Today
I'm sharing my favorite lasagna. This is so cheesy.
It's got a rich meaty sauce, you are going to absolutely love it.
We've been eating it about
once a week for dinner around here. Now to get started, go ahead
and pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
First thing you want to do is cook your lasagna noodles.
Go ahead and grab a large pot of water. We're going to add quite a bit of salt to that.
We're going to bring this to a rolling boil.
You are going to need 12 lasagna noodles
for today's recipe. I always cook 14 just in case one rips really badly,
and those two at the end go to my dogs.
These may not seem like they're going to fit it first.
They'll soften in the water and you can just gently roll them down under the water.
We're going to cook these noodles to be Al Dente, which your package
instructions should tell you how to do that.
For me,
they're just going to boil
for 10 minutes, and you want to make sure that you're stirring occasionally,
so the noodles don't stick to the bottom. Once your noodles have cooked,
we're going to take this over to the sink where you're just going to drain it through a strainer
and immediately run cold water over the noodles to keep them from
cooking any further. Set those noodles aside
for now, and we can start preparing our sauce.
This is what really makes my lasagna so special.
Now we're going to start with one medium sized onion.
And we're just going to be using half of this. Now of course will cut off
one of those ends, remove that outer skin,
and we are going to really finely chop this onion. Now set that aside,
and we'll mince three large cloves of garlic.
This one is a little bit bad. So let me cut off that brown spot.
I've thrown out like half of the garlic clove, so we're just going to throw another one in here.
You really can't have too much garlic. Okay,
we have our onion prepped, we have our garlic prepped,
so let's head back over to the stovetop, where you're going to need a large skillet.
Add 2 tablespoons of oil to the skillet over medium heat.
Once that oil is shimmering, and the pan is nice
and hot, add your onion and we'll stir frequently
for about 3 to 5 minutes until the onion is softened.
Okay, now we'll add that garlic into the pot as well.
And we're going to stir that constantly
for about 30 seconds until you can really smell that nice garlic fragrance.
Okay, for today's recipe we are using two different kinds of meat. I'm using ground beef,
and this is a lean ground beef, and I'm also using sweet Italian sausage.
I'll add both of these to the pan. Any time I'm cooking meat,
I like to add some freshly cracked black pepper and some salt to it as well.
It just helps to bring out the flavor. Now crumble that meat
as you go and just cook it until it's nice and almost completely browned.
Now I don't have a lot of grease in the pan,
as you can see, so I'm not going to be draining this meat sauce,
but if you want to, or find that you have more grease, you certainly can.
Now if your meat is beginning to stick to the bottom of the
pan, and you have a nice brown layer down there, you're going to want to
deglaze the pan with just a splash of red wine
or with a little bit of beef broth. Today,
I don't need to do that. Alright, so our meat is almost completely browned,
so I'm going to start adding my seasonings, starting with one
and a half teaspoons of Italian seasoning, 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder,
I also like to use 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder,
even though we do have lots of minced garlic in there, 3/4 teaspoon
of salt, 3/4 teaspoon of ground black pepper,
I always like to add 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red
pepper for just a little bit of heat, and a teaspoon of dried basil.
Of course, we'll get this worked into our meat
until everything is nicely combined. And let's add our tomato sauce.
I'm going to be adding 28 ounces of tomato sauce.
You'll also add a 14 ounce can of diced tomatoes.
These are fire-roasted diced tomatoes just
because that's what I prefer, and you are not going to need to drain them.
Okay, so I always add sugar to my tomato sauce.
It just helps to cut the acidity from the tomatoes,
so I'm going to be adding 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar.
You can start with two and then add a third if you feel that it needs it.
My great-grandmother was a hundred percent Italian,
and she probably wouldn't be very happy with this sugar addition
because she told me that it was the Sicilians who added suga.r
And one time she went to a wedding,
and they couldn't even eat the food because the pasta sauce had sugar in it,
and it was just the worst thing ever, so she probably would not enjoy this lasagna
as much as I do. This is also not going to make the sauce super sweet.
It's not going to taste like a candy sauce or anything like that.
What it does is it's cutting the acidity from the tomatoes,
and it's enriching the flavor for a really good flavorful sauce.
Our sauce is looking beautiful. It smells beautiful. You want to do a taste test
now and add any other spices or salt and pepper as needed or more sugar as needed,
so I'm just going to set this aside and let it simmer. In the meantime,
I'm going to be preparing my ricotta cheese layer. Now in a medium bowl
I'm going to combine 15 ounces of whole milk ricotta.
We’ll add 1/2 cup of shredded parmesan cheese.
This is freshly shredded, and my secret weapon is I love to add half a brick of full fat cream cheese
as well.
This just adds some extra creaminess to the filling.
It's another dimension of flavor. It's not going to make it taste like cream cheese.
It just adds something special to the filling. We’ll also add one egg.
I’m just going to lightly beat that up before I add
it and a teaspoon of dried parsley.
We'll just mix everything together until it's nicely combined.
So we have all of uur components prepared, now.
all we need to do is assemble this lasagna. Now,
I'm using a 13 by 9 baking dish,
but you can see this one's a little bit deeper than your average dish
because this makes it pretty deep lasagna. We’ll start by layering some of that
sauce, just a couple spoonfuls, onto the bottom of the pan,
so the noodles don't stick. Layer four of these noodles across the bottom of the pan.
Now we'll spoon a third of the remaining sauce evenly over those noodles.
You can see this is a nice meaty sauce. I love that about it. Next,
take half of your ricotta cheese mixture,
and I'm just going to get dollop that over the sauce.
You do want to spread this in an even layer. It's going to be a thin layer.
I'm just using a spoon here,
and it's okay if the sauce and cheese get a little bit swirly, that's fine.
Next, you need your mozzarella cheese. You need 3 cups total for this recipe.
I'm just going to sprinkle 1 cup over that ricotta layer right now
Next, we'll do another four lasagna noodles,
half of the remaining sauce, everything that's left of your ricotta cheese
mixture, again we’ll spread that evenly over the sauce,
another cup of mozzarella cheese,
and now this is our final layer of lasagna noodles, we’ll do another
four. Now evenly pour the rest of your sauce over top of those noodles.
And everything gets topped off with that last cup of mozzarella cheese.
If you'd like, you can also sprinkle a little bit of fresh parmesan over top as well,
which is what I like to do. Now,
this was on you dish is really full,
so we're going to put it on a pan, that way, if anything bubbles over, we're not going to
make a mess of our oven. To keep it from drying out,
we're going to cover it with some foil, and then to keep that foil from sticking to the cheese,
I just lightly spray it with a little bit of olive oil first.
This is a little messy because it's awkward for me to do on camera,
so I'm just smearing some of that olive oil over the surface. Now we’ll cover our lasagna.
This will need to go into your 350 degree Fahrenheit oven,
and it's going to bake covered for about 40 minutes. After 40 minutes,
you can remove the foil and let it continue to bake
for about another 10 minutes. It should be nice and bubbly and all that cheese should be melted.
Now, this lasagna is still really hot, so cutting into it is going to be pretty messy,
but you guys know I don't have any patience, so let's let's take a peek at it.
This is messy but it smells so good.
This lasagna is perfect served with a nice green salad or some homemade bread.
I cannot wait for you to try it out
and let me know what you think. Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
That's good.