The BEST Way To Make Lasagna

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Today we’re making Classic Lasagna with Meat Sauce. I hope you enjoy it!

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****PRINT RECIPE WITH INSTRUCTIONS AND PROCESS SHOTS****
https://www.sipandfeast.com/italian-american-lasagna/

INGREDIENTS
For the meat sauce
1/4 cup (60ml) extra virgin olive oil
1 pound (454g) ground pork
1 pound (454g) ground chuck
1 medium onion diced
5 cloves garlic sliced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
3 28-ounce cans plum tomatoes hand crushed or blender pulsed
salt and pepper to taste
For the ricotta mixture
1 1/4 pounds (680g) ricotta drained overnight
1/4 cup minced flat-leaf Italian parsley
1/4 cup chopped basil
1 egg beaten
salt and pepper to taste
For the lasagna
5 cups (1.2kg) meat sauce – plus more as needed
1 pound (454g) lasagna noodles see notes below
1 pound (454g) sliced mozzarella cheese
1 cup (90g) grated Pecorino Romano
1 teaspoon olive oil

VIDEO EDITOR:
Billy Mark: @bluecrestproductions

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Today we’re going to make one of my favorite things, classic lasagna. This is the Italian American version that you’re probably most familiar with. It’s the one that I love. It’s the one that I grew up with. Okay, so let’s go over the ingredients. This is a simple recipe, but there’s like a couple major steps to it. So, one of the first major steps is the sauce. So, the sauce, we have one pound of ground pork, one pound of ground chuck. I have one, it says one medium onion, but this is like a large onion diced. It’s going to be fine, especially for the amount of tomatoes we’re using. Five cloves of garlic. We’ll put some olive oil in there. And I have three cans of plum tomatoes. 28 oz cans of plum tomatoes. This is going to give us enough sauce for all of the lasagna. And we’ll have a little bit extra. But make sure you’re using at least three cans. Nothing precludes you from using a fourth can or making even more sauce. You need a lot of sauce for this. Okay, so that’s the sauce component. For the cheese component, one of the cheese components, I have 1 and a4 pound of regotta cheese. I drained it in a strainer just to take some of the water out. It’s not too critical though because you do need a lot of water in here from the sauce and everything to finish cooking your Wagada noodles. Into that, I have 1/4 cup of parsley and 1/4 cup of basil. They’re just wrapped right now, so they don’t turn, but it doesn’t matter. That’s going to be mixed into this regard mixture. We’re going to season it up with salt and pepper to get it really flavorful. And then once we like it, we will put in one egg. Okay, the egg is kind of a binder. It’s going to prevent everything from like really getting super wet and oozing. Though it’s not a big deal. You can take that out if you like. You truly can. Other cheese. We have a pound of mozzarella. So, we’re going to I have it divided into three sections here. I have deli sliced mozzarella. So, we’re going to use three layers. So, it’s easy if you just do it this way, but nothing um says you can’t just buy a block of cheese and shred it or you can uh slice it yourself. If you’re going to slice a block, I would just put it in the freezer for about 30 to 45 minutes. Also have one cup or 90 g of pecarina ramano. Can you use parmesan cheese? The answer is yes, but it’s better to use pecorino. All right, so I would definitely do that. Also, I forgot I have uh one teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes. That’ll be for the sauce. Olive oil for the sauce. And then for the lasagna, I love to use the Dco brand. They actually tell you on the box how to make this without par boiling them. I’ve done it that way. It’s still better if you par boil them. So, that’s how I’m going to show you to do it today. It’s It’s really not a big deal. They give you about 22 sheets in here. You need 18 to do three layers. So, you have a few extra. You can make like a little lasagna for one person or uh you can use like say you break a couple then you can use the perfect ones though it doesn’t really matter. Everything’s just going into into the dish. That’s pretty much it. Let’s make the sauce right now. Okay. So, I have a five C brazer here. This is just going to fit our sauce, but a six court or an 8 court would be even better. I’m just doing this so you can see in here. All right. A lot of things I do on this channel are, you know, so I can demonstrate them the best. That all being said, it will fit. I’m heating this up to about medium heat. I’m going to put in a little bit of olive oil now. We’ll probably add in more after. And let’s just let this get nice and hot. And then we will just lightly brown our beef and pork. All right. So, that’s hot. Again, this is one pound of ground pork and one pound of ground chuck. Just break it up a little bit. Spread it out here so we get some even contact on the bottom of our pot. And I’m just going to put that over there to prevent splattering. You might be asking, Jim, my grandmother, my nona always used sausage in her lasagna. Well, use sausage then. That’s what I would do. Um, you can use all sausage if you like. You can use half beef, half half uh Italian sausage. You can use any meat you like here. You You really can. I think I like the balance of the beef and the pork here. My favorite way to do it is with the meatballs. Take big meatballs, break them up into pieces, or if you have a lot uh time on your hands, make about 150 little meatballs, and then you put them on each layer. The way we’re making it here today is the way that most people in the United States will think think of what lasagna is. Yeah, that’s true. That’s been about 3 or 4 minutes. Turn it over a little bit. All right. Try to get the other side as best you can and give that another 3 or 4 minutes. Now you can just come in here with your meat masher or just use the wooden spoon and then just break up the meat. All right. Well, you can season initially with a little bit of salt right now on the meat. Just doing about a teaspoon of kosher salt. Little bit of black pepper. Okay. I’m going to turn off the heat for a second. And I’m just going to scoop the meat out of here with a kind of slotted spoon. [Music] Put that off to the side. And then just put in all that onion. All right, turn the heat back on and keep it below medium heat, about a four out of 10. If there’s not enough fat in your pan pot, which there isn’t here, put in more olive oil. Sprinkle of salt. And let’s just cook these until they get nice and soft. About five, 7 minutes. If your pot was burnt down here, if like you had your heat very high for the meat, you could just delaze with a little bit of water or wine and that’ll evaporate very quickly and then you’ll be able to clean your pot and saute your onions. But we’re fine right now. All right. So, while our onions are softening, if you have whole whole plum tomatoes, you can hand crush them if you want if you like, or you can blend or pulse them. Okay. Make sure you have clean hands and then just come in like that. So, you basically have a shield hand and then the other hand is breaking them up. You could also just stick your meat use your meat masher that you just we just used for the meat to do it. But there’s something very therapeutic about doing it this way. All right, we’re gonna let that keep going. These tomatoes just put off to the side. I’m going to use them in a couple seconds. And then the cans, the interior here, we’re going to put a little bit of water in there just to clean them out. Meaning like and we’ll put it in here. Not clean them out to clean them, just to get the tomato remaining tomato residue. And then I just have one can of uh scaffani crushed. All right, these onions are maybe maybe another two minutes on the onion. Okay, when they’re nice and soft and translucent without having any color on them, then you can add all that garlic in here. Now, I’m mixing garlic and onion together. Normally, like a lot of recipes, like Italian recipes, you won’t do this, which is an odd thing. Like I was discussing this the other day cuz I love to cook everything and you know, you look at Indian recipes and a lot of other recipes from other cultures and they’ll just, you know, use both all the time. So, but you know, I get the idea how you don’t want the flavors to compete. I find that like the meat and the onion tends to drown out the garlic. Even when I put garlic in here, it’s doesn’t do much, but we’re going to add it today. All right, just going to let this keep going. Maybe turn up my heat just a touch. Okay, so everything is nice and mingled together. Start. That garlic’s really fragrant. I let it go for about 3 or 4 minutes without burning it. You can see how that looks. It’s beautiful. Okay, this is hot red pepper flakes. About a teaspoon. Not hot really. Not too spicy. But if you’re opposed to that, just uh just remove just take it out. It’s going to be fine without it, too. Okay. Let that bloom in there for about 20 seconds. And then let’s put all the meat back in. All the meat, all the fat. Okay. Just mix that together. Now, if you’re going to use wine for this, which you totally can, I would put it in now. And then you can just really clean the bottom of your pot. If you use red wine, you’re going to have more of a deeper taste to your lasagna. If you use white wine, you’re going to have more of a bite. They’re both great. All right, so here are tomatoes. That’s two of those cans. Hopefully, we can fit the other can in. I know we can because I just made this the other day. Okay, then that’s the cleaning of all three cans. Add that in, too. And we are pushing the limit, but it’ll be fine. All right, let’s bring this up to a simmer. And then once it simmers, we’re going to just keep it on very low while we attend to the other parts of the recipe. Okay, so that’s starting to come up. Just trying to get nice nice and hot. Evaporate a little bit of the liquid, but you don’t have to evaporate much. We need a lot of liquidy sauce for our lasagna. Okay. So, what I’m going to do now is I’m just going to simmer this very on low heat with the lid cracked off to the side. So, basically like in that position. Okay. Like an inch cracked. The amount of time that it takes for us to do the other two components will be perfect. Our sauce will be ready to go. Okay. What you can do right now is just taste it for salt and pepper. That’s good already, but I’m going to put some salt in. And I’m going to add a little bit more hot red pepper. This is for my liking and I hope my family’s, but you know, always cook to how you think your family and your taste testers are going to want to enjoy it. All right, I’m just going to pop this on the burner off on the side. Okay, bring a pot of water to boil. Uh, salted water for pasta. We’re going to par boil those lasagna noodles, those lasagna sheets. 1 and a/4 lb of regata cheese. You can use more if you like. You’ll have a thicker layer. We need two layers of it for a 9 by13 baking dish. So one and a/4 pound is is pretty much good enough. And if it’s not, we’ll just mix in a little bit more. That’s all you have to do. Okay. Lots of parsley. I said 1/4 cup, that’s more than 1/4 cup. It’s going to be fine. And I say 1/4 cup of basil. That’s probably less than 1/4 cup, but it’s going to be fine. Okay. I’m going to put a little bit of salt in initially to start. And let’s mix this up. Use a bigger bowl if you uh have one handy. I should have. Just get it well incorporated. Let’s make sure that it tastes good before we mix our egg in. I’m going to put more salt in. I’m going to put some pepper. You don’t have to put pepper, but I’m going to. You can even put in some garlic powder if you like. Mix this all in again. Taste it again. Get it perfect. Once you have it perfect, then mix your egg in. Okay, it’s one egg. It’s not too critical for a recipe like this that you put the egg in. It’s much more for say when you’re doing stuffed shells so it doesn’t all ooze out of the shells. Just mix it back up. It’s not going to be yellow. It’s going to turn back white. But we mix the egg in before we ta taste it so we can taste it without eating a raw egg. That’s good. All right, let’s put this off to the side and boil par boil those sheets. Okay, my water is almost boiling. And you know, just for this brand, four minutes is all you have to boil them for. to really par boil them. Probably would have to cook them like 12 minutes or more to fully cook them. There’s 22 sheets in here. So, we’re going to do half of them at a time. If you put them all in the pot, 8 C pot, uh it’s going to be a little too tight. You only need to boil them for 4 minutes. So, it’s an 8 minute process. This is coming up. And I have a water bowl right next to me here. I’m going to put ice in there. All we’re going to do is after they come out, we’re going to shock them. Put them on clean kitchen towels or parchment paper. Okay? just like a 1% 1.25% salinity. You can calculate that based off the salt you use, but for diamond crystal about two tablespoons to to two to three tablespoons, not a half a cup. Okay, which I’ve seen some people say like I’m like yikes. Not the dead sea, you know. Did you put oil in it? You could put a drop of oil in here. I never do it for anything. They say it doesn’t do anything chem like chemistry wise, but for this we don’t want it to stick. A drop is not gonna hurt. Okay. And now you just watch me drop in lasagna. Tara, can you set the timer for four minutes? Already done. Thank you. All right. So, I’m just moving them around a little bit so they don’t stick. My water doesn’t need to be boiling that aggressively. Okay. So, use tongs or like a pasta spider, something that you can just grab them easily with, which they kind of tend to slip. Okay. So, just like this. And then right away they’re okay. If they’re cold, then just lay them. And they will try to stick. Like this one tried to stick right away. Yeah. See, like I broke that one. Okay. That one will be for later. Okay. And you can separate them almost immediately. Okay. And I just take another sheet right on top. Okay. Like that. Like this. Okay. And then we’re just going to repeat for the other batch. Simple as that. Here are the sheets. Okay. They’re all perfectly set up with parchment paper layers. Again, if you don’t want to use parchment paper, though, I recommend it’s like a really good kitchen tool to always have. And I just buy it in packs of like 50 or 100. But if you don’t have it, use clean kitchen towels. Just a bunch of them. Put them on there. And sometimes they have a tendency to stick. That’s the only thing. Parchment paper won’t stick at all. Okay, here is our sauce. It’s been simmering for over 30 minutes. Want to taste it one more time. Really get this right. So, our lasagna is perfect. And you can let this sauce simmer for a couple hours if you want. Perfect. You got to remember it’s going to cook for another hour in the oven. Speaking of the oven, 375° Fahrenheit. Okay. Middle rack. At the end, we’ll broil it for a second if we have to, but it’s not not critical. All right. So, remember, we have in the back, I just can’t fit everything on top here. I have the mozzarella. I have the regotta mixture. And I have a cup or 90 g of pecarino. This is a 9 by13 baking dish, which is the perfect size for these lasagna sheets. And you’ll see in a second. Now, the other brands, they’re very mo most of them are very similar size. If they’re not, if they’re larger, it’s not a big deal either. Okay, I’m just putting a drop of oil down here. And I’m going to wipe the sides. The print recipe I have, it says five cups of the sauce, but you might need more or less. You’re probably going to need more. This is why we make a ton of sauce. Okay, so the first thing we’re going to do is put a really thick layer of that sauce on the bottom here. Okay, now these are going to overlap a little bit, which is what you want. And I just kind of push them up the sides. And then that last one again, kind of up the side. That’s our prepared regotta mixture. Use half of it now. And then we’re going to use the half on the other the second layer. It’s easier to to pipe to drop this with like an ice cream scooper into different spots because then you can just come back and get it like spread easier. But it’s all going to melt anyway in here. It’s all going to find level as it bakes. All right, here’s the mozzarella. A lot of people ask about whether or not the lasagna is in the cookbook. The lasagna is not in the cookbook. I am sorry. I think the main reason why we didn’t do it is we didn’t really like the pictures and the video was really old. I did a video for this like six years ago now. There’s plenty of baked pasta. There’s plenty of baked pastas and they’re all very similar. Cookbook is right there. You can buy it right here. You could buy it right here with a QR code in the description. It’s pinned. By the time you see this video, it’s going to be out in one week. One week the cookbook is coming out. We’re filming this roughly 3 weeks before the release of November 25th. We’re on actually the third printing already. So, it is done tremendously in pre-sales and I am sure many of you have already purchased it. If you’re one of those who hasn’t and you’ve been thinking about it, I’d recommend you do it because that third printing order won’t be here till after the November 25th date. I think it’s going to help you a lot. Uh, a lot of these recipes, a lot of the favorites that you’ve been enjoying over the years are in that book. And uh depending on, you know, how many print runs we go on, we’re probably going to do a second one. And uh it will probably have lasagna in it. I would I would assume. I think for that one, we’ll do lasagna uh carnival, which is the one with the tiny meatballs, unless we do a deli cookbook. Deli cookbook. Yeah. Yeah. Leave a comment below if you which one you want and for the second book. We’re really going to survey. We’re going to survey the email list, too. Uh that that will that will help as well. If you’re not subscribed to the email list, subscribe to that as well. There’s 130,000 people that we bombard with emails every week. If you like getting a lot of emails in your inbox, definitely subscribe. Next layer here after the mozzarella is more sauce. Does it matter if I do it in reverse? No. But it’s just the way I’m doing it. Okay. And then a third of that pecarino. Okay. So, we’re just going to grab from our perfectly placed lasagna sheets and we’re going to do the next layer here. Okay. Again, just kind of up the sides. You can save one of your parchment paper pieces. We’re going to need it. I’ve tried making it the no boiled method. It always comes out better this way. If you want to do the no boil method, you can. I I not really sure. I think you got to put even more sauce than I’m doing here. But basic or you might have to just cook it longer than we’re going to cook it for. Let’s try to distribute this a little better this time. Yeah. You know, maybe you could go with one and a half pounds of the regata cheese. I’ll tell you what, you bake, you make this, you tell me what you think. If you think it needed more, you let us know. Oh, did I forget the mozzarella? Look, I forgot the mozzarella. Tara, we got to start the video over. All right, cut. No, we don’t. I’m putting it right on top. I’m not trying to remove that sauce, though. All right. Well, we got sauce over there, so [Music] Okay, final layer. Now, what’s nice about the final layer is you’re right at the top of the baking dish, which is what you want. So, you get all the crispiness on the outside here. And if you want even more crispiness, I can tell you after you cut it, you can throw individuals back in the oven with the broiler and you can just cover the top part with foil because that’ll already be cooked and it’ll hit up the sides. Or you could do these in individual individual servings. Okay. And then the top layer, you just you’re not you’re not using the riotta. You’re just using sauce, mozzarella, and pecarino. Kind of wet down those edges a little bit. I’ll put the pecarino first and then the mozzarella. I like on the top not to cover it completely with the mozzarella. Like leave some gaps. If you don’t use the whole pound, it’s okay. That’s all the sauce is left. Not much. Not much. And then that is what we’re left with. We’re left with five pieces. So, there was 203 in the box. Okay. So, our oven is set to 375. Put a piece of parchment paper here on top. Don’t just put foil because the foil is all going to stick then to to your cheese. This will stop that from happening. And also, it goes without saying that you should have a baking sheet under your baking dish because it will things will all leak out and it’ll ruin your oven. Not ruin it. It’ll just make it hard for you to clean your oven. Okay, it doesn’t matter which side the foil faces. Okay, we’re going locking this in 45 minutes like this. And then we’re going to remove it. And then we’re going to let it keep cooking for another 20 minutes roughly. Oh, and then the last minute you can broil it if you like, but be but watch carefully. You don’t want to burn it. But it does look good when it’s nice and crispy. That’s been 45 minutes. You could already I can hear it leaking out. That’s why you really want to use one of these uh baking baking sheets underneath. Okay. Still got a little sticking with my parchment paper, which is unusual. Probably because it was wet. Normally, it never sticks with parchment paper, but it would have stuck more with foil. All right. So, now that’s 45 minutes. So you can see that did a lot of the cooking of the pasta. Now we want to let it brown on top and absorb like some of the moisture, but it’s looking good. Back to the oven for another 20 to 25 minutes. And the last minute or so, if it’s not brown enough on top, I love to broil it. You just have to watch carefully, but I love to hit up these crispy edges. Okay, put that right back in. All right, so this has been 45 minutes covered. 22 minutes uncovered and then broiled for 45 seconds. It really didn’t even need it. Now, if you want it even more so, you can, but I will tell you, you got to be careful. So, you can like I would leave your door open on the broiler like on your oven and then just have a glove and then just rotate it to the spots that you want to hit up. But, we got nice crispy edges here. The biggest thing now, the hardest thing to do is to wait. If you dig in right now to this or any baked pasta, especially lasagna, it’s going to be loose. It’s going to fall apart. you’re not going to be able to get a nice slice. So, give it 30 minutes minimum, but I’m telling you, even if you let it sit for an hour or more, it’s better. And it’ll stay hot in this baking dish. It’ll stay warm. Uh, that’s what you want to do. So, we’re going to wait for the taste tester. And, uh, I know he’s counting down the minutes because he really wants to try it, but, uh, patience is necessary. Just so you know, this has been resting for over an hour, which is the way to do it. So, you will be able to get us get a nice slice. So, I’m able to come in here and pull a perfect slice for him that won’t like fall apart right away. You can still see the steam coming from it. It’s probably been an hour and a half sitting there without um not even covered. So good. It’s really good. It’s better than last time. It’s better than last time. Yeah. I let it sit here. The crunch. That’s my favorite part. Yeah. I like to take out individual slices and let them You can even do this when it’s cold, like cold, and then you put it in a broiler. That’s perfect. I’m curious to hear how this stacks up against the lasagna soup. It’s definitely way better. So, yeah, I had to redeem myself because you gave that lasagna soup a six. Lasagna soup’s good, but like so like not good compared to lasagna. It’s like this but watered down. That’s what I said in the video. I still ate all of it though. Yeah, you ate it all on camera. Yeah. While giving it a six. Some people might rate might rate things differently than me. But a five is like mediocre. Anything below that is bad. A six is still good. is just like not anywhere near like really good. Just so you know, I always step away because we have two mics on. So, they’ll compete. They’ll pull like audio. So, because it’s all on one one track, just so you know, I’m not like always just hiding in the corner over here with with him eating like like please, you know, give me a good rating. Even though I really like lasagna, it’s still like not one of my favorite things. And I know it probably is a lot of people’s favorite thing. So, a lot of people might be like, “This should definitely be a 10.” But I’m going to give it a nine just cuz it’s not my favorite thing in the world, but still really good. This one isn’t in the cookbook. We do have baked ziti. We have a baked sausage pasta. We have stuffed shells. Baked ziti is a better version of lasagna in my opinion. Some people might disagree with me on that though. So, I’m thinking about starting my own YouTube channel, and it would be like I cook all the recipes in the cookbook that he has. It’s a fabulous idea. There’s this channel named Auntie Chef. The the guy is um it’s a longunning channel. He he started a channel before I did. He um has been making Julia Child recipes the whole time. And uh I think now he’s also does other other chefs stuff, too. So, it’s been done before, James, but I do think your idea is still really good. Yeah, but if I do start doing it, we’ll be sure to let you know. All right. Well, there you go. Another clean plate. Thank you, James. You got to go work out now after eating all that. Yeah. We will see you next time.