This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Nah, you do not have to pre-cook any kind of
pasta for lasagna, even dried pasta like this. You can just layer them right into the pan with
your other ingredients. They will cook in the moisture of your sauce. With dried noodles,
that comes out surprisingly good. But of course, just because you do not have to do
something doesn't mean you do not want to. You might still want to parboil your pasta,
even though it is kind of a pain. I think it is particularly worthwhile with homemade fresh
pasta. But I think the reason people have such divergent opinions about this is because
pretty much anything that you could do works, and the resulting differences in the finished
product are more subtle than you would expect — or at least more subtle than I'd expect.
I'm going to show you a whole bunch of test bakes that I did, and I'm going to try to describe
how they tasted. My sauce is just fried-off onions, tomato paste browned a little in the pan
and this brand of crushed tomatoes. Super good. A little wine, lots of herbs and spices,
simmer for at least an hour. My cheese layer is grated mozzarella into a bunch of ricotta,
a bunch of grated Parmesan, eggs, pepper, salt, mix it all up. These are the standard
Italian-American lasagna fillings, I'd say, though we would often put ground beef in the sauce. Now,
in a way, the most obvious choice of noodle here would be these: fresh pasta
sheets specifically formulated and shaped to go directly into a lasagna pan with no pre-cooking.
You can see they're more like semi-fresh — they're stiffer and less sticky than real homemade fresh
pasta. My sense from watching TV is that Brits and other Europeans have had these for a long time.
I did not start seeing these in mainstream U.S. supermarkets until a few years ago,
and it's usually in the refrigerator cases around the deli section. And what could be easier,
right? If you can get these, it's a great weeknight dinner. I'm just kind of underwhelmed
by the taste and texture. They come out a little gummy. I'm not a huge fan. Let's go to dried
pasta — standard dry lasagna noodles. This is the way my dad taught me to make lasagna, I imagine
how his Italian mother taught him. You parboil (partially boil) the noodles — pretty much just
until they are pliable, maybe half or two thirds of the cooking time that they give on the package.
You then pull them out to ice water to stop the cooking. If you don't shock them like this,
they tend to be way too soft in the end, plus they'd stick together as they cooled.
All laid out on a towel, and use another towel to dry off the top sides. And then if you want,
you can trim them so that they'll perfectly fit whatever size pan you're using. And you don't
have to throw those trimmings away. Fry them up in a pan with some butter, fresh herbs, top with some
cheese, very nice. I usually start with a little sauce to keep the bottom layer of pasta from
sticking or drying. Then, for all these tests, I'm doing one cup of sauce or cheese for each layer
and building four total layers. I'm just trying to keep everything standard to isolate the boiling
variable. Top with some reserved mozzarella, cover with foil for baking. Let's build an
identical lasagna now with dry noodles. The first problem that you're going to run into is that
they aren't pliable, ao they have to perfectly fit the pan that you plan to bake them in.
If they don't, you're going to have to snip off the end or break off the end,
which is tricky to do without just totally shattering this thing. The best method that
I came up with was to position one finger behind the line that I want to break across, and then
push outward. Still not great. Bend the noodle over your guide finger, and that's better there.
Same deal as before — a cup of the filling between each layer. But here's an important caveat:
parboiling serves another important function, which is to season the inside of the noodle. You
would normally boil it in salted water. If your noodles were not made with much salt inside them,
and if you're not parboiling them, then you have to over-season your other elements. They shouldn't
be disgustingly salty, but they should definitely taste a little too salty in isolation.
They are donating seasoning to all of this bland bulk that we are layering in. I imagine that
sealing with foil will be even more important here, to trap the water that the noodles need.
Speaking of which, I want to try a third lasagna where we put in some extra water — the amount of
water equivalent to the water that would have been absorbed if we had parboiled the pasta,
which for my lasagna here is approximately 144 grams, apparently. I'll measure out a little
more than that because you're going to lose some to evaporation. I probably could have just poured
this water directly over the fully assembled lasagna before I baked it. But to be safe,
I'll pour it directly onto each pasta layer as I build — in little doses, just to be sure that
it's evenly distributed. All three test lasagnas go into the oven at 400 Fahrenheit, 200 C. I'll
uncover after about four 40 minutes and give them a second dose of mozzarella on top.
Ten minutes later, I'll flip it on the top element to the broiler to brown the cheese,
and then here we are: parboiled, raw with extra water, raw with no extra water. The difference is
visually apparent. The dry one looks dryer, though not in a bad way, I don't think. Time to taste.
Parboiled noodles — that feels like the lasagna I grew up with. The pasta isn't exactly al dente,
but it isn't mushy either. Really nice. Here's raw noodles baked with extra water. The noodles are
noticeably firmer, but not in a bad way. Raw noodles with no extra water here. I am
surprised by how little textural difference there is compared to the one we did with extra water.
The texture is virtually identical between them. They're both pleasantly firm.
One difference that I did notice was a slightly more concentrated flavor in the
dry lasagna, which is hardly surprising. The extra water that we added into this one
diluted the flavor a little bit, so next time I'll use saltwater. To me, the real test of lasagna is
how it tastes the next day, because baked pasta dishes are almost always better reheated. I try to
make lasagna the day before I want to eat it so I can reheat it for 20 minutes in the oven and then,
boom, this is the lasagna that we cooked totally dry. The fact that the noodles were noticeably
firmer yesterday means that they have held up better into today. The noodle always softens
a little bit with the reheating, so I kinda think that was perfect. One problem is the bottom layer
of noodle is really dry and tough. I can't cut through it with my fork. I reckon there's
some things we could do to prevent that problem, though — maybe bake it in a different kind of pan,
lower the temperature, maybe bake it in a water bath. We'll get back to that.
Time now to repeat the experiment with real homemade fresh egg pasta. Eggs, a glug of
olive oil, and flour. Whisk until you can whisk no more, get in with your hands and kneed until
you can kneed no more. Kneed in basically as much flour as it'll take. You want it smooth,
elastic and only slightly sticky. Cover and let rest in the fridge for a while so the flour can
hydrate. Time to roll, and I think I'm going to be up late on this one. Good lord, this is
a hard job to do without a second person to help you feed it through. For a lasagna, I go down
to the second-thinnest setting. I'll trim these into the perfect size for my pan and store them
on the ancestral fresh pasta storage system — a clothes-drying rack. Not my finest work, but hey,
it's going to be covered up in a lasagna, so whatever. Just blast through them.
Twelve noodles go into boiling water. When you boil dry pasta, you're making it softer. When
you boil fresh pasta, you're making it firmer — especially egg pasta. You are setting that
protein structure. When all the noodles have visibly puffed up a bit and lightened in color,
out they come to the ice water. Get them all cooled down and separated from each other.
Lay those out on a towel to dry. It is so late. I am so tired. I love fresh pasta,
but it does not love me back. I'll build my lasagna exactly as before with a cup
of filling in between all four layers. Time to repeat with the raw noodles — look at how much
smaller they are in there. Egg pasta puffs up so much when you boil it. That one's all done.
And how much water did these absorb when boiled? About the same proportion as the dry pasta.
A little math, and I will supplement this one with a roughly equivalent amount of water — salty water
this time. I learned my lesson. For what it's worth, I don't think that I would ever actually
make lasagna like that if I wanted it a little bit wetter. I would just not boil so much water
out of my tomato sauce. I'll bake these exactly as I did before. Could've gotten some better color on
those, but — boiled, raw with extra water, raw and dry. Look at how much taller the boiled one
is compared to the dry one. Though, the boiled one shrank down as it cooled. I guess that was
steamed puffing it up. And that is very delicious, the boiled fresh pasta. Homemade egg noodles,
man — there is nothing like them. Now, check out the raw noodles with extra water.
What a nice clean cut we got there. Same deal with the raw and dry one. If I was cooking for
Instagram, then clearly I would use the raw fresh egg noodles, but because I'm cooking for my mouth,
nah. The fact that those fresh raw noodles cuts smoothly is reflected in their texture.
They are a little brittle. They're a little mealy. The boiled fresh noodles were harder
to cut because they are more elastic, which I think is the way pasta should be. Now look,
if your family has been making lasagna with raw fresh egg noodles for generations and you love it,
please don't think that I'm trying to tell you you're wrong. I mean, this is just what I like.
I'm just here to tell you there definitely is a noticeable difference between boiled fresh noodles
in lasagna and raw fresh noodles in lasagna. Though again, there's hardly any difference
at all between the one cooked with extra water and the one cooked dry. That is interesting.
I just didn't really like either of them. Again, there's just that kind of mealy texture.
Those noodles also felt a little leathery to me in some spots and a little bit gummy in others. Not
a fan. If I'm going to go through the Herculean effort of making fresh pasta from scratch for my
lasagna, I'm going to do it the way I want it, and the way that I want it is boiled. And if you are
bothered by that messy cut, do the trick that I'm pretty sure a lot of restaurants use, which is to
chill the lasagna overnight. It's now a very firm and you can get a very clean cut on it. Reheat it
covered for about 15 minutes, uncover and then you can freshen up the appearance with a little more
cheese on top. Melt and broil until brown and there you go. A ton of work, but I don't think
lasagna gets much better than that. However, the fact that raw dry lasagna noodles got me such good
results makes me wonder if I couldn't come up with a weeknight lasagna recipe that I would really,
really like. I'll get back to you on that. But I can tell you right now that you can make a
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the raw pasta on which you build your lasagna, straight out of the box. And unlike lasagna,
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That could be anything from food blogging or podcasting to building a full restaurant menu
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takes to make lasagna, easily. And you can start for free at squarespace.com. But when you need
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lasagna. I owe much of my present career success to you. We've had some good times, you and I.