Easy Cheesy Baked Lasagna Recipe (for Dummies 101)

After two successful recipes (sushi bake and baked salmon), I decided to up the ante by taking on a slightly more complicated recipe. Mind you, this isn’t complicated per se, but just has a lot more moving parts to consider. Ready? Presenting… my Cheesy Baked Lasagna!

Special thanks to Auds for providing me with this recipe, which is supposed to be completely authentic, complete with bechamel sauce – which I tweaked a bit, due to a lack of ingredients hehe…

 

DELECTABLE FOOD FOR THE DAY: CHEESY BAKED LASAGNA

DIFFICULTY: Moderately easy, perhaps a 10 year old could do it

SERVING SIZE: Good for 5 hungry people (It was FINISHED in 20mins)

PREPARATION AND BAKING TIME: 3 hours (for beginners)

TOTAL COST: PHP 600 (PHP 120 per person)

 

INGREDIENTS:

 

Homemade red sauce w/ spinach puree

• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 300g spinach (although you can add more if you’d like)
• 4 medium sized tomatoes, diced
• 500g tomato sauce (I substituted this for spaghetti sauce as a “shortcut” since I didn’t want to add sugar/salt/pepper, but it ended up rather watery LOL. Stick to tomato sauce, don’t cheat the recipe)
• 500g of ground beef/pork (You can choose to do pure or mixed ground beef/pork depending on your preference)
• Pinch of garlic powder
• Pinch of basil leaves (If you have it fresh, tear up 15 basil leaves)

 

Homemade bechamel sauce (this is what really sets it apart from normal lasagna, and it’s so easy to make. I am definitely a convert)

• 600ml of full cream milk (I use Harvey Fresh)
• 60g of butter (or ¼ of a normal bar – I used the Anchor brand)
• ¼ cup all purpose flour

 

Putting it all together

• 8 pcs Lasagna noodles (this depends on your tray size)
• 200g Mozzarella cheese (I love my mozzarella! You can put less or more)
• 100g Parmesan cheese

 

PROCEDURE:

STEP 1: Prepare your red sauce w/ spinach puree

1. Mince 6 cloves of garlic

2. Dice up your tomatoes

• Clean your tomato by: (a) washing the tomato, (b) slicing it in half, (c) slice out the stem remnants at the top, and (d) gently take out the seeds inside [ok, this isn’t proven, but there are theories that tomato seed when mixed with calcium can cause cancer. Better safe than sorry!]

• Slice and dice the tomatoes into small squares. I got lazy so mine’s still a bit big. Would suggest you make them smaller as it can be a bit distracting to eat a chunk of tomato while chewing on your lasagna

3. Chop up your spinach

• Take out the stalks from the spinach, then gently wash the spinach in a bowl. If you have a lot of spinach, do it one chunk at a time. Dunk it in, swish it around, then let it drip on a bowl with holes (I’m sure there’s a legit name for this, but I don’t know what it’s called!). Repeat process 3x (coz apparently, spinach is VERY dirty)
• Chop up the spinach into small square bits

4. Cook the sauce

• Heat up the pan
• Pour in your minced garlic first. Move around until the garlic starts turning brown

• Place ground beef next. Move around until it turns brown (semi-cooked)

• Place ground pork. Again, move it around until the pork turns white-ish (originally pink)

• Take out the meat from the pan, and drain the liquid.
• Place the tomatoes, spinach, garlic powder, and basil leaves). Move it around to cook. This is pretty fast as the tomatoes and spinach cook quickly
• Take out the veggies from the pan, and drain the liquid.
• Pour in your tomato sauce. Add back the cooked meat and veggies. Season with sugar, salt and pepper if needed – depending on your preference. In retrospect, I definitely had way too much spinach.

STEP 2: Prepare your bechamel sauce

1. Place pan in low heat. Put in the butter, milk and all purpose flour

2. Keep stirring until the sauce is thick and creamy, with no big bits remaining

STEP 3: Lasagna assembly

1. Prepare the lasagna noodles

• Choose a pan that’s “long,” so the noodles won’t break when you put it in.
• Fill a pan with water (more than half the pan should be covered). Wait for water to boil
• Once the water is boiling, place some cooking oil into the water, as this will prevent the noodles from sticking to each other
• Place a pinch of salt into the pan to add flavor to the water, which will then be transferred to the noodles
• Gently place the noodles into the water – make sure you place it in straight, so it doesn’t bend or stick to the other noodles
• Keep the noodles in for half the time you normally would, as it will cook further during the baking period. The noodles we use normally takes 10-12 minutes to cook. So I kept it in for 5 minutes only

2. Time to assemble!

• Place olive oil on the bottom of the pan so the noodles won’t stick to it
• Place three pieces of noodles at the bottom. I should’ve made sure the noodles were kept flat. Also, my pan is rather small – so really, should’ve just used 2 1/2 noodles instead, so that it doesn’t end up too crowded.

• Pour red sauce w/ spinach puree in. Make sure it covers all the noodles. But keep this a THIN layer. Mine is a bit too thick, and thereby the reason why my lasagna has ZERO structure. Hmph

• Pour white sauce in. Make sure it covers all the red sauce. Again, keep this a thin layer.

• Sprinkle parmesan and mozzarella cheese on top

• Repeat these steps for each layer

**I made a mistake as I poured way too much red sauce and white sauce in between layers, so I ended up with a layer of noodle at the top. This is a huge no-no, as the noodle dries out quickly. Make sure you end with the cheese on top. Do NOT place the noodle anymore.

3. Pop into the oven at 200 deg C for 20 minutes

 

STEP 4: Bon appetit!

 

[Update] I repeated this lasagna again, and learned from my previous mistakes! Alas, I still had noodles peeking out the sides when baking and therefore ended up burnt. Still, this was a better attempt than my first time (as it should be!)