Bachelor’s Lasagna

⚠ Note: for metric to imperial (or vice-versa) conversion please refer to our article on Cooking Measurements 101.
♼ Featured image is generic and may not represent the (final) appearance of a dish.
♼ Recipe origin is unknown. Bachelor’s lasagna recipe, recipe Rating: 4.6
Number of votes:97

I’ve been trying to perfect the perfect lasagna, for my tastes at least. It’s been a long road, and I’ve played with it and tweaked it quite a bit and now, I love it,all my friends seem to wolf it up. I made the instructions non cook friendly and simple. It’s good when it’s done, it’s better after it’s been in the fridge the next day.

Ready in: 1 hour 30 mins

Ingredients

Serves: 12

• 16 ounces Lasagna noodles (tried a few, Get Barilla brand, it makes a big difference)
• 26 ounce can Hunt’s(R) Three cheese pasta sauce. (yep it’s cheap. I’ve tried expensive sauces, get a cheap sauce and season to taste)
• 2 pounds turkey or pork Italian sausage. 1 mild 1 hot or 2 mild 2 hot depending on your spice preference (in the breakfast sausage section, they’re tube shaped, squishy when you touch them)
• 2 (8 ounce) containers ricotta skim cheese
• 12 deli-cut slices mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup fresh grated parmesan cheese (or buy a package and be lazy like me)
• Cavender’s(R) all-purpose Greek seasoning
• 5 teaspoons oregano
• 1/2 freshly chopped onion (optional)

Preparation method

Prep: 30 mins | Cook: 1 hour

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Get your 9×14 Lasagna pan prepped. I spray it down with olive oil but, not necessary.

3. Get a pot of water ready to boil lasagna noodles in. Turn on burner to high-medium high to start the water boiling and add a tsp of salt. Do this when you sausage is about half way done.

4. You need to brown the sausage first. On medium high heat, brown the sausage and as it’s browning make it into nice crumbles. You want onions? Add them half way through cooking. You’re going to see less and less pink, so go ahead and fire up your water for the noodles.

5. When the water is rapidly boiling, place the noodles in the water. It might take a minute to get them flexible enough to get them all the way down. and get them cooking. You only want to cook these noodles for about 6 or seven minutes.

6. Get a sauce pot ready as your finishing up your sausage.

7. Poor in the cheapo sauce and start to heat it up. Taste it. Add what you’d like, just don’t salt it too much, there’s lot’s of salt in that sausage! Sauce is the last thing you have to do, so don’t feel too pressured, everything will be fine if it sits for a few minutes.

8. After around six minutes, noodles are done! Not really, but remember, you’re baking them next. It will be much more firm than you’d think, it’s fine. You need to rinse those noodles now though. Pour into a colander and run cold water as you mix the noodles around, natural starch makes them want to stick together, so mix em up a bit and the cold water stops them form cooking.

9. Heat up your sauce and season to taste. (use Cavender’s) Place a very thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the 9×14-inch pan. Place your first three or four noodles down after the sauce. Lay down half the meat you cooked.

10. Lay down about a third of your sauce. (Your going to use your sauce in two more layers, one very thin, so use your best judgment)

11. Next use 8 oz of Ricotta cheese and spread it over the meat and sauce. This is kind of like cream cheese in it’s consistency, so nuke for 30 seconds uncovered if you’d like to make it spread easier.

12. Lay down six pieces of Mozzarella cheese on that layer.

13. Lay down another set of noodles.

14. Repeat above without the layer of Mozzarella.

15. Lastly, minus the Mozzarella, lay down noodles on top of your second layer. Sauce lightly the top of the noodles. Lay out last six pieces of Mozzarella on top of noodles. Spread the sauce around a bit more doesn’t hurt. Throw that Oregano on top. Now comes the Parmesan! Sprinkle over the lasagna.

16. Bake in oven about 40-50 minutes till cheese is slightly browned and bubbly.

17. Serve with garlic bread and Cavender’s to taste.