Even layers help every bite of lasagna stay balanced and flavorful.Avoid dry or soggy lasagna by spreading fillings evenly.Letting lasagna rest after baking helps layers set for clean slices.
Lasagna is arguably one of the best comfort foods to cook up during the winter months. After all, you can’t go wrong with a hot, delicious pan full of cheese, noodles and sauce. What’s more, lasagna is great for feeding a large crowd or for stockpiling leftovers to nosh on throughout the week.
While it’s difficult to get lasagna wrong, there are some things you can do to make sure you’re baking up the most delicious lasagna possible. We chatted with six chefs who all agreed: the key to making really good lasagna lies in how you layer it. Read on for more of what chefs had to say about how to make the best lasagna.
A Good Lasagna Is All in the Layers
Chef Ashish Alfred, who co-hosts the show Bar Rescue, said making a good lasagna is all about, “treating every layer with care and balancing sauce, cheese and noodles so each bite is cohesive.” “Consistent layers,” Alfred explained, “mean every piece is well-balanced, never dry or soggy.”
Ben Dodaro, executive chef at Maria and Enzo’s Hideaway in Orlando, Florida, said even layers are what ensures lasagna remains a “pasta-focused dish.” “Elements of the [lasagna’s] filling should be uniform and not too bulky,” said Dodaro. “Lasagna is about balancing the fillings and the pasta to ensure the pasta is not overwhelmed. Personally, I like to layer in a way that all the elements of the filling are lightly spread out to be present in each bite.”
Makes sense to us: When assembling a lasagna, it’s important to spread each filling ingredient out evenly over the noodles, so there’s equal amounts of each ingredient in every bite. After all, no one wants a bite of lasagna that’s all cheese, no sauce, or that’s so heavy on ground meat that you miss the flavor of the lasagna noodles.
Chefs Agree: Lasagna May Be the Perfect Comfort Food
In fact, it’s this perfect balance of layers that makes lasagna so good to begin with. Jessica Randhawa, founder and head chef at recipe site The Forked Spoon, said lasagna is so comforting, “because it is basically layers of coziness.” “Lasagna is creamy ricotta fillings, gooey melted cheese and tender pasta,” she explained, “all baked together into the ultimate comfort food.”
Sarah Hill, the recipe developer behind Real Food With Sarah, said, “lasagna feels comforting because it’s a labor-of-love dish that rewards the time you put in.”
Because lasagna is a dish that requires lots of hands-on effort in the kitchen, it’s important to get the layering just right so that every cheesy bite has perfect flavor distribution. Just like you wouldn’t want a lumpy blanket making your holiday movie-watching session uncomfortable, you don’t want a lasagna that’s not a perfect balance of every single flavor you’re lovingly adding into it.
Pro Tips for Making the Perfect Lasagna
Getting your lasagna just right may seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how our chefs said to make the perfect lasagna every single time.
Try two cooks: Joe Isidori, the chef behind Arthur & Sons in New York City, said you can bake lasagna twice, pressing it with a heavy pan or other item to get the dish evenly layered. “You layer the lasagna, then after you cook it, you put some weight on it, put it in the refrigerator, and let it cool and press overnight,” Isidori explained. “The next day, put it into a low-heat oven for 45 minutes to an hour, let it come up to temperature and serve it piping hot. This ensures every layer is compacted perfectly with the perfect texture, flavor and bite.”
Isidori also said fresh lasagna noodles are the way to go, if possible. If you are using dry, boxed lasagna noodles, especially the no-bake variety, Randhawa says it’s important to use enough sauce to give the noodles the moisture they need to cook.
Hill cautions that if you’re using cooked lasagna noodles (the boxed kind you boil before adding to the lasagna pan), you should go sparingly with the sauce, especially if you’re including vegetables that produce a lot of moisture, like spinach or zucchini. “Layering controls everything,” she added, “how the noodles hydrate, how the sauce and cheese distribute and whether you get clean slices or a soupy, collapsing lasagna.”
Hill’s preferred method of lasagna-layering? “I start with a thin layer of sauce, then noodles, then a light layer of meat sauce, then béchamel and a bit of cheese and repeat,” she said. “Keeping each layer thin and consistent helps the lasagna bake evenly and gives a balanced bite every time.”
Toni Elkhouri, owner of Cedars Cafe in Melbourne, Florida, said it’s important to let lasagna rest once it comes out of the oven. “After you bake,” she explained, “let it sit for about 20 to 30 minutes to set up. Otherwise, it’ll slide everywhere and have uneven layers.”
The Bottom Line
Lasagna can be made a variety of ways: full of meaty sauce, packed with vegetables or simple with cheese and sauce. However you prefer to make your lasagna, chefs agree it’s important to layer your ingredients evenly, ensuring there’s an equal amount of each ingredient in every single bite.
To get an evenly layered lasagna, choose an amount of sauce that doesn’t dry out or water down your lasagna, then make sure extras like cheese, meat or veggies are spread out evenly across the pan. Other ways to ensure an even lasagna include adding some weight to the top of the dish to evenly distribute the ingredients and allowing the lasagna to rest after baking to ensure the layers don’t slip and slide when you cut into it.
Above all, remember that lasagna is a labor of love and something meant to be enjoyed. “Lasagna hits that sweet spot between nostalgia and indulgence,” said Elkhouri. “It feeds people generously, and the dish basically feels like home no matter where home is to you.”
“When you treat lasagna like a craft instead of a casserole,” Elkhouri added, “ it becomes something really special.”
Dining and Cooking