Lasagna Night

What can I make with the stuff on my kitchen shelves? Time to raid my cupboards!

I'm saving money by using what I already have
in my cupboard. 

I found two half-used boxes of lasagna shells, so… Lasagna it is.

Lasagna is definitely a versatile dish, since most of us have everything we need in our kitchens already.  The only ingredient I don’t have sometimes is ricotta cheese, which acts as a “glue” to hold the dish together.  However, in a pinch I can use my mom’s recipe for what I call “Lasagna Glue.” Scroll down for the recipe.

Here is my Last-Minute Lasagna recipe.

You will need:

Lasagna shells

1 lb. Ground beef

½ pepper, chopped

½ onion, chopped

1 jar of your favorite tomato sauce. I recommend Wegman’s Tomato Basil sauce.  It is cheap and very tasty.

Ricotta cheese. If you don’t have it, use the “Lasagna Glue” (see below)

16 oz. Mozarella Cheese

Parmesan Cheese to taste

The first step is to cook the peppers and onions in a couple of teaspoons of oil (I used olive oil).  I then remove these veggies and cook the ground beef in the same oil, which is now infused with veggie flavor. You may add a bit of garlic to cook with the beef if you wish; I do this sometimes.

Once the meat is cooked, I return the veggies to the pan and add salt and pepper to taste. I let all these ingredients cook together a bit longer (about 5 minutes).

In another pot, I cook the pasta shells according to the instructions the package. 

Assembling the lasagna:

I begin by covering the bottom of a 9x13 cake pan with tomato sauce.  Some people might use oil instead. Then, I make a layer of pasta shells, ricotta or lasagna glue, ground beef, more tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese.  I then repeat this step as many times as I can.

The final step is to make a final layer of lasagna noodles and cover it with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and parmesan cheese (in exactly this order). 

I cover this dish with aluminum foil and cook it in a preheated oven (350 degrees) for about 20 minutes. Then, I remove the cover and cook the lasagna for another 10-15 minutes.  Everything in the dish is already cooked, so just make sure that the cheese is melted, and you’ll be just fine.

Note: I used to heat/cook the pasta sauce before using it so it didn’t taste “raw,” as it happens with many tomato sauces.  I find that I don’t have to do this with the Wegman’s sauce, but definitely had to do it when I used Ragu, for instance. Though the sauce was okay when used “raw,” the flavor seemed to improve quite a bit when I “cooked” it.

Lasagna Glue

You will need

3 cups of water

2 tablespoons of flour

1 tablesppon of butter

Salt and pepper to taste

In a small pot, heat two cups of water until it boils.  Meanwhile, combine in a bowl the remaining cup of water with the flour so that it dissolves. Add this mixture and the tablespoon of butter to the boiling water in the pot.  Stir constantly until a nice, homogenous mixture emerges.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Optional: Add any herbs or spices you’d like.

Use this mixture in place of the ricotta cheese.

This dish is not as good as when I use fresh lasagna sheets (available in my supermarket), but it was pretty good, and a bit cheaper.  This was definitely better and cheaper than eating out!