My 2 cents:
Cent 1: If you’re boiling the noodles, then really for lasagna, it’s no more effort to make fresh egg pasta: mix up egg and flour, roll it out, cut it into strips and you’re there. If you have a pasta machine in the back of the cupboard, even easier. And much, much, better: the noodles are light instead of dense.
Cent 2: If you’re not in a large family (or even if you are), you can also freeze uncooked lasagna pretty well. So individuals can make a full recipe in three loaf pans, cook one, and have two in the freezer.
I use a ricotta/cottage cheese, egg and parmesan mixture for the middle and add a little gruyere to the mozzerella topping. I think it tastes pretty good.
Cook your noodles according to the box; no-cook ones don’t get soft enough for me.
Layer 1: Red sauce with meat and/or veggies
Layer 2: Noodles
Layer 3: Ricotta/egg/oregano mixture
Layer 4: Noodles
Red sauce etc.
Noodles
Top with much grated mozzarella, parmesan, oregano
I use a variation on this recipie and it is actually the worlds best lasanga (as advertised)
My variants that (I think) improve things.
A dash of cinnamon to the sauce (just a dash! It’s easy to overdo it)
a dash of nutmeg to the ricotta mixture
more ricotta than the recipie calls for (I like ricotta though so I double the ammount)
half spicy half sweet sausage instead of all one or the other
Sub red wine for water
No salt in the ricotta mixture (why would you need to salt cheese?)
Don’t season with all the salt the recipie calls for. Season the onions while cooking them (before you add the meat to start the sweat), season the meat while browning it. Then season the sauce to taste.
sub brown sugar for white sugar add back white sugar to taste
People will tell you you don’t have to cook the sauce, I have tried it this way, and while it’s ok just making the sauce and letting it sit for 24 hours without cooking (or with minimal cooking) I find that the sauce really does taste better if you cook it for about 6 hours the day before you want to assemble the lasagna.
Mrs. Dash is an easy way to make garlic bread, not necessarily the best way. My Grandma Bodoni used to use salt and pepper and garlic and other spices on her garlic bread. Mrs. Dash is a salt-free mix of spices. The best way to make garlic bread is with oven-roasted garlic and butter, but not everyone is in the habit of roasting heads of garlic.
My father’s parents, who came from Palermo, Sicily, would also call you heretic for using bechamel.
I noted the regional differences in my very first post on this subject. Embrace the various types of lasagna, from alla Bolognese to Genovese (pesto) to Sicilian. At least we can agree on cottage cheese.
I thought I would report back on the MOMUMENTAL CULINARY SUCCESS I acheived with my lasagne’s. Everyone was constipated!
The one that went UP NORTH was RAVED about and I had to confess that since I made it 2nd, I was running low on meat, so I used the last of the spagetti & meat sauce for the topping and had grabbed up Whole Tomatoes at the store instead of diced.
BUT the biggest uhhhhhhhhhhhhh oooops for me was when I was dashing in some dried (homegrown, TYVM) oregano into the sauce, I had forgotten that I had taken out the holey top thing and the entire contents of the oregano poured in.
I spooned out ALOT of it and then eyeballed in the same about of pepper and something else so it would be equaled out. When the lasagne was finished and my husband transported it Up North with our friends ( I followed the next morning.) my girlfriend said it was the SO F’in HEAVY! (She’s a Clean Eater, which is something I am trying to do, but it is very hard when the budget is so very restricted.