Chicken Lasagna Roll-up Recipe (Step-by-step for Dummies 101)

I had lots of leftover lasagna sheets from my previous lasagna experiment, so I decided to make yet another lasagna, with a slight twist this time as inspired by Honeykki (many thanks to friends who’ve been giving me recipe suggestions to try out!).

DELECTABLE FOOD FOR THE DAY: CHICKEN LASAGNA ROLL-UP

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

SERVING SIZE: Good for 5 moderately hungry people (might be bitin if you’re very hungry)

PREPARATION AND BAKING TIME: 3 hours (for beginners – it’s the prep time that takes sooo long)

INGREDIENTS

Chicken filling

• 2 small onions, diced
• 400g of mushrooms (I used Jolly Mushroom Whole Champignons), diced
• 300g of spinach, sliced
• 250g of shredded cooked chicken
• 200g of cream cheese (This was supposed to be ricotta cheese, but I couldn’t find any, so I used cream cheese as a substitute)

Sauces

I wanted to do both red and white sauce, but you can just opt for one. Honestly, I don’t think I really tasted the difference because the chicken filling really overpowers the sauces

• Red sauce: Tomato sauce (bought this off the shelf)
• White sauce: Alfredo sauce/cream sauce (made this myself because I didn’t have it readily available at home). You simply need: 300g of full cream milk, 30g of butter, 1/8 cup all purpose flour

Putting it all together

• 10 lasagna sheets (my plan was 2 lasagna roll-ups per person)
• 1 tbsp of salt
• 250g Mozarella Cheese (this time, purchased a block instead of pre-shredded, because it was 1/2 the price of the shredded mozarella!)

PROCEDURE:

STEP 1: Prepare your chicken filling (1.5 hours)

1. Boil the chicken for 30 minutes so it’s cooked and tender

2. While the chicken is boiling, prepare the vegetables

• Dice your onions into small pieces

• Drain the juice from the Jolly Mushroom can. Slice up the mushrooms – but don’t make them too small. You want them to still be noticeable enough for you to taste when you bite on it

• Wash the spinach, then dice them into 1 inch (or thicker) strips

3. Cook the vegetables – you can opt to put salt and pepper, but I didn’t

• Heat the pan, and place some oil onto it
• Place the onion first. Move the onion around the pan so it doesn’t get burnt

• Afterwards, place the mushroom and move it around to cook it

• Lastly, time to place the spinach. You know the drill by now. Move it around until you see the leaves becoming smaller

4. By now, the chicken should be cooked. It’s time to shred them into strips. This took me 30 MINUTES. I guess I’m really really slow… On the bright side, I was reading a book while shredding so I guess it was productive time spent (could also be the reason why it took me so long)

5. In a bowl, add and mix the shredded chicken, 200g of cream cheese, and the cooked veggies. Tada! That’s your filling – yuum! I admit, I sneaked in a couple of bites while making this

STEP 2: Prepare your sauces (15 minutes)

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

3. If you find the sauce too thick, or if it’s clumping up – just add more milk to the mix

STEP 3: Lasagna assembly (75 minutes)

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
• 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. Shred the mozzarella. Again, this took me 10 minutes to do! I wonder if it would’ve been better if I got the pre-shredded ones. Oh well.

2. Time to assemble!

• On your baking glass pan, smear tomato sauce on the bottom so that your bottom layer won’t be burnt when you bake the lasagna in the oven

• Once that’s done, get a lasagna sheet and place it onto a flat surface, and spread the sauce over the sheet

• Place a dollop of chicken filling onto the sheet and spread it evenly across the sheet

• Afterwards, sprinkle shredded mozzarella all over the filling

• Lastly, rollup the lasagna sheet nice and tight (this is why it’s called lasagna rollup. Yum!)

• Once that’s done, place it onto the baking pan

• Repeat the process until you’re done with all the lasagna sheets

3. For your extra red and white sauce, just pour it over the top of your rollups, then sprinkle mozzarella all over so it’s nice and cheesy

4. Pop into the oven at 200 deg C for 20 minutes. Don’t forget to pre-heat beforehand! I always forget to do this, so once I’m ready to bake my lasagna, I always end up having to wait for the oven to hear up!

STEP 4: Bon Appetit!