This is a tried and true recipe. It’s easy to prepare. It feeds a crowd and add a salad and some garlic bread and you have an Italian feast! People will ask you to share your recipe, you decide if you want to give away the secret to your success! This is Really Terrific Lasagna!
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Jump to RecipeI actually developed this recipe for really terrific lasagna when I was in my early twenties. I made it for just about every potluck and family gathering I hosted or attended for years! One day, my best friend, asked me for the recipe so she could try to make it she was so happy with how easy it was and her family was so impressed with her cooking when she made it! Fast forward a few years and she wanted me to share the recipe with her younger daughter who was newly married and just getting into cooking. It is now a staple recipe for their family!
The Ingredients
This lasagna has very simple ingredients that starts with a combination of ground chuck and ground Italian sausage. I love the flavors of these combined and I think it really elevates this lasagna recipe.
For the cheese, of course I use mozzarella and parmesan, but for the filling cheese I use ricotta or cottage cheese, whatever I have on hand. I will say the ricotta firms up a little nicer than cottage cheese, but either works good. As long as you add one egg to your filling cheese mixture, it is sure to set up so you don’t end up with runny lasagna!
I typically use Ragu sauce in my lasagnas. I prefer the flavor and consistency of Ragu, but really, any good spaghetti sauce will do here.
Because you are using store bought sauce you really do not need to add a lot of seasoning here. I throw in a little extra garlic powder and Italian seasoning for good measure, but it is not required for a good outcome.
Putting together Really Terrific Lasagna
Assembling this lasagna is the fun part. It comes together pretty quickly and the layers turn out great after you have baked it thoroughly and allowed it ample time to rest and set up. I would say if you have an hour or two to wait after it bakes, I would give it that time.
This beautiful casserole dish is perfect for this lasagna!
After I pull the lasagna out of the over I cover it back up with foil and put a couple oven mitts on top, then I just let it sit there for an hour or two. If you have the patience, you will not have a runny lasagna!
Check out some of my other Easy Dinner Ideas!
Really Terrific Lasagna
Course: DinnerCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy10
servings30
minutes1
hour1
hour30
minutesIngredients
1 Large container of small curd cottage cheese or 30 oz Ricotta cheese
2 cans of favorite spaghetti sauce (I use Ragu)
1 Cup of grated Parmesan Cheese
6 Cups of Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
2 tsp. Oregano
2 tsp. Garlic Powder
1 lb. Italian Sausage
1 lb. Ground Chuck
Salt and Pepper to taste
9×13 Baking Dish or Lasagna Pan
1 egg
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350
- Mix sausage and beef together with garlic powder and a touch of salt and pepper.
- Brown both meats together in a large sauce pan with garlic, salt and pepper. Drain.
- Put back in pan and mix in both cans of spaghetti sauce. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl, combine the cottage cheese, parmesan cheese and oregano. I usually add a little salt and pepper here too for added flavor, but be careful because parmesan is quite salty already. (add the egg here, I forgot, but it is important to allow this to set up right).
- Your mixture should look like this:
- In a 9×13 pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray, add a ladle full of the meat sauce (just enough to cover the bottom.
- Then put 3 of the uncooked noodles down.
- Spoon one half of the cottage cheese mixture evenly over the noodles.
- Cover with 1/3 of the mozzarella.
- Cover this layer with the sauce mixture.
- Add three more noodles on top of the sauce and cover with 1/3 more of the cheese mixture.
- Cover with 1/3 more of the mozzarella. Now is not the time to be stingy with cheese! Add three more noodles on top of the cheese (you won’t add any sauce mixture to this layer before the noodles.)
- Add the last bit of the cheese mixture, another handful of mozzarella, and cover with sauce mixture. Cover that completely with the remaining mozzarella. At this point I like to sprinkle just a touch of Italian seasoning on the top to be fancy.
- Here comes the tricky part. You have to bake this heaping mound of lasagna covered with foil. How will you get foil on this without all the cheese sticking to the top you ask? Why you spray it with cooking spray of course!
- Bake covered, on a baking sheet in case of any spills, for 1 hour at 350 degrees, then 15 minutes uncovered.
- Allow lasagna to “rest” for at least ½ hour in order to set and not be runny when serving.
- For a complete meal, serve with garlic bread and salad.
Notes
- You can make this lasagna a couple days in advance and cook it the day of.
- For an easy lunch on the go, freeze in pieces and take to work in the morning, by lunchtime it should be thawed. This lasagna reheats very well in the microwave. I recommend heating it covered at at 50% power if possible.
- I will typically bake this lasagna a few hours before dinner time, you can leave it covered out of the oven for up to two hours and it will still be hot.
