Community Pick
World's Best Lasagna - Bens Modified
photo by Rookcookie
- Ready In:
- 2hrs 45mins
- Ingredients:
- 23
- Serves:
-
12
ingredients
- 1 lb sweet Italian chicken sausage (casings removed)
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
- 1 (6 ounce) can double-concentrated tomato paste
- 2 (6 1/2 ounce) cans tomato sauce
- 1⁄2 cup dry white wine
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1 1⁄2 teaspoons dried basil leaves
- 1⁄2 teaspoon fennel seed
- 1 teaspoon italian seasoning
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1⁄2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- no-boil lasagna noodles
- 16 ounces ricotta cheese
- 1 egg
- 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
- 1⁄4 teaspoon of grated nutmeg
- 3⁄4 lb mozzarella cheese, grated
- 3⁄4 cup grated parmesan cheese
directions
- In a large sauce pan, cook sausage, ground beef, onion, and garlic over medium heat until well browned.
- Stir in 1/2 cup white wine.
- Stir in crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce.
- Season with sugar, basil, fennel seeds, Italian seasoning, bay leaves, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon red crushed pepper and 2 tablespoons parsley.
- Simmer, covered, for about 1 1/2 hours - 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
- In a mixing bowl, combine ricotta cheese with egg, remaining parsley, nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
- To assemble, spread 1 1/2 cups of meat sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish.
- Arrange noodles lengthwise over meat sauce. Do not overlap noodles, but break pieces to fill in gaps.
- Spread with one half of the ricotta cheese mixture.
- Top with a third of mozzarella cheese.
- Spoon 1 1/2 cups meat sauce over mozzarella, and sprinkle with 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.
- Repeat layers, and top with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Grate some black pepper on top.
- Cover with foil: to prevent sticking, either spray foil with cooking spray, or make sure the foil does not touch the cheese.
- Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes.
- Remove foil, and bake an additional 25 minutes.
- Cool for 15 minutes before serving.
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Reviews
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Wonderful lasagna. I've made it before from the Allrecipes site and here are the adjustments I make based on their 4000 reviews: double the garlic, use 3/4 cup red wine instead of water, add 1/4 tsp of nutmeg to the ricotta mixture and use only 1tsp of salt in the sauce. Actually I don't think the sauce needs any additional salt due to the salt in the sausage and canned tomatoes, so I will omit it next time. I'm not a huge fan of sausage, but my family likes it so I keep it in. I might try to find a really high quality sweet Italian sausage from a butcher next time to see if I like it better.<br/>Update: I made it without sausage and it wasn't as good. Used 28 oz fancy ground tomato (no salt) and I liked the control over the salt. I also added more noodles (full box) and separated the layers of sauce from the ricotta cheese layer and that worked fabulously. Next time I will use the full box of noodles again and add more sauce to the sauce layers (3 cups a piece).
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I added the extra garlic but have recovering alcoholics in the fam so used the water. I used no hamburger just more sausage. I really like the no-cook noodles so I made it with that. Salt to taste. It was yyyyuuuuummmmmyyyy! Whole family loved it and I made extra in foil take home pans so they could freeze or eat. Thanx for the recipe and hints!
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Tweaks
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Wonderful lasagna. I've made it before from the Allrecipes site and here are the adjustments I make based on their 4000 reviews: double the garlic, use 3/4 cup red wine instead of water, add 1/4 tsp of nutmeg to the ricotta mixture and use only 1tsp of salt in the sauce. Actually I don't think the sauce needs any additional salt due to the salt in the sausage and canned tomatoes, so I will omit it next time. I'm not a huge fan of sausage, but my family likes it so I keep it in. I might try to find a really high quality sweet Italian sausage from a butcher next time to see if I like it better.<br/>Update: I made it without sausage and it wasn't as good. Used 28 oz fancy ground tomato (no salt) and I liked the control over the salt. I also added more noodles (full box) and separated the layers of sauce from the ricotta cheese layer and that worked fabulously. Next time I will use the full box of noodles again and add more sauce to the sauce layers (3 cups a piece).