What's wrong with this lasagna recipe?

Cafe Society
1

I recently (about six months ago) started getting interested in cooking. I was always pretty good at making stuff when given a recipe to work off of, but it just wasn’t something I was into. I let my husband do 95% of the chefing. But one day I was hit with the intense desire to make some chili, and the urge to cook just… hasn’t… gone … away… since.

That first day, a severe lack of cookbooks led to the development of a technique that has worked pretty well for me. (The aforementioned chili, may I say, is godlike in its glory.) I do a search on google for the words “recipe <dish I want to make>” and copy down three to eight recipes that look good. I then blend them together, searching the ingredients list for common themes. (All of the recipes start with four potatoes? Automatic inclusion. Six of eight use mozzarella, and the other two use monteray jack? Upgrade to the jack. Two of five include bacon? Mmm, bacon. Three of six use asparagus? Eww, no way.)

However, I’ve hit a wall with my lasagna. I’ve made it three times, making small adjustments each time, and it’s just… ok. It tastes good and all, but it’s just not working as well as my other dishes. There’s something missing, hubby and I agree, and I have no idea what it is. It’s not a particularily complicated receipe, maybe it’s too plain?

INGREDIENTS

1/2 to 1 package lasagna noodles (depending on dish size)
1 pound lean turkey (preferred) or ground beef
1 1/2 jars spaghetti sauce
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup cottage cheese
3 cups grated mozzarella cheese
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoon dried leaf oregano, crumbled
2 teaspoon dried leaf basil, crumbled
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

DIRECTIONS

Cook lasagna noodles according to package directions; drain, separate, and set aside.

In a large skillet, brown meat (salted) and onion; drain well. Stir in spaghetti sauce, garlic, and one half of the dry spices. Simmer for a time.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, mix together the parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, and the remaining spices.

Lightly coat (or spray) the bottom of pan with oil.

Build layers consisting of the lasagna noodles, then the sauce, then the ricotta cheese mixture, and finally the mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers at least twice. The ingredients will settle a little bit when you bake the lasagna so build right to the top. Finish with a little bit of sauce and a layer of mozzarella.

Bake lasagna uncovered for 1 hour, or until thoroughly heated and bubbly. Let stand for 15 minutes before cutting and serving.

2

Looks like you’ve got all the right ingredients, so you might try adding more spices.

3

You may get a lot of responses with fancier recipes that don’t use canned sauce, but I think the main problem is that looks like a low fat recipe. Turkey instead of ground beef? And I don’t know what that cottage cheese is doing there, that should be ricotta too.

4

I see a few things I’d tweak, in no particular order:

  1. Season your cheese mixture. A bit of pesto will liven that right up. If you don’t want to mix up some pesto, just add a bit of salt, pepper, garlic powder (not garlic salt), basil and thyme.

  2. Make your own sauce. Seriously, it’s not that hard. I make a putanesca-inspired sauce for my lasagna.

  3. Season your meat mixture. Salt, pepper, garlic…ah, just use the same stuff you use in the cheese mixture, but include some thyme and oregano.

  4. Add an egg to your cheese mixture.

  5. Add a little asiago cheese to your recipe.

5

Spaghetti sauce!!! - I’m not a picky eater, but that’s just horrific! Oh retch!! Double retch!!!

Here use this recipe
Or this one

World’s Best Lasagna

6

No spinach? Mr. SCL and I co-operate on a lasagna that is heavenly - I make the sauce and he does the rest. Fresh mushrooms and frozen chopped spinach are layered with the ground beef and cheeses.
Ummmmmmmmmm.

7

I just don’t think that turkey works for lasagne. I love turkey burgers and other recipes with ground turkey, but the combination in lasagne just doesn’t work for some reason. For me, it smells bad, and that is a large obstacle to overcome for a dish.

If you insist on using turkey (instead of beef or going all veggie), try using fresh spices instead of dried. That can make a huge difference all by itself.

8

Adding an egg, as previously mentioned, to the ricotta is a good idea. It improves the texture and also makes it easier to spread around.

I’d ditch the cottage cheese. I hate cottage cheese in lasagne.

What kind of spaghetti sauce are you using? There’s a lot of variation between a good jarred sauce and a bleh jarred sauce. I use the Newman’s Own sauces quite a bit, and I like those.

I’d kick it up with the extras – adding spinach or some sauteed mushrooms would make it more interesting.

Fresh herbs would also help, particularly the basil, which should be getting cheap right now at farmer’s markets. We had a bumper crop this year.

I like adding some more sauce after cooking; it makes the whole thing seem less dry.

9

You might try mixing some Italian sausage in with your ground beef, or adding some fennel to it. Also, chop up some fresh versions of the dried herbs you are using, and sprinkle them on the top when the dish is finished cooking.

10

People put cottage cheese in lasagna?!

The vowel at the end of my last name is crying…

11

Putting cottage cheese in Lasagna is a mortal sin. Desist at once.

Ok, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. But it can only subtract from the end result. Use only pure, luscious ricotta, mix it with 1 beaten egg for firmness.

12

I also really don’t understand that cottage cheese part. Not that ricotta is at all dietetic, but all the other cheese is just as bad for you!

13

That was my reaction. Canned spaghetti sauce aside, the cottage cheese is a major, huge, enormous Bad Thing.

14

Honestly, the turkey and the cottage cheese is NOT a half assed attempt to make it “light”.

I’ve been substituting turkey for ground beef for so many years now that I can barely tolerate the taste of ground beef in anything but a burger. It’s too… shudder oily. Nasty oily. I’ve tried making the lasagna with the beef and it was the worst version yet.

And the cottage cheese was a direct request from my husband after my first attempt. He dislikes ricotta. I was unsure myself at first, but after I tried it I rather enjoyed the texture. The taste was not applicably different, not to me, anyway, and he liked it, so I continued to use it.

Tried the egg thing and was definitely unimpressed. I can try adding it back in as I play with the balance.

Spinach in a lasagna… not my thing, but better than a lot of vegetable
versions that I’ve seen.

More/better spices are definitely worth a shot.

And Italian sausage, and/or pesto… yum, good ideas!

15

Oh, and a good 90% of recipes I found use pre-made sauce, so I figured at the time that it couldn’t be too great of the sin. I used a different (high quality) sauce each time, so I don’t think that it’s the fault of a particular brand.

I’m willing to ditch the pre-made sauce at this point (my container garden is overflowing with tomatoes right now anyway), but I don’t think that I will ever be willing to use a recipe that makes use of the words “dutch oven” in combination with “1 1/2 hours”. Life is too short.

16

Here are my suggestions:

  1. Lose the jars of spaghetti sauce in favor of canned crushed tomato with a tablespoon or two of canned tomato paste - about twice the volume you’re using (we’ll get to that later). Season to taste before adding to the lasagne (this includes adding onions, peppers, etc.). Keep the meat out of it – spread it over the bottom layer of noodles and pour sauce over it then.

  2. You’re generally underseasoning. Also, I find that basil and oregano don’t get along, and would use one or the other, but not both. But that’s just me.

  3. You’re overcooking the noodles. You want them in the water about long enough to be pliable, and that’s all, before baking. This adjustment is also why you’re increasing the amount of sauce. In your pan, start with a layer of sauce (this is a good idea anyway), then noodles, and go from there. You’ll need to add another 45 minutes to the baking time as well.

  4. I assume you don’t include layers of green peppers, black olives, sliced mushrooms, sausage, pepperoni, etc., because you don’t like them. And that’s fine. Just … fine.

  5. This is only my opinion, but I think you’re wasting your Parmesan cheese by stirring it into the ricotta and baking it in the lasagne. On the topic of cheese, 3 cups of mozzarella sounds very light, but I assume that if you wanted more, you’d use more.

  6. More generally, if you’re going to cook ground meat in a pan, then pour the fat and other liquid off, don’t bother to season it until later.

17

Bah – ignore the cottage cheese naysayers. I make a lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I mix two eggs in with the cottage cheese, and use half the mixture in each of two layers.

Also, instead of just mozarella, I like to use a mixture of a couple kinds of cheese. Try some Monterey Jack along with the mozarella.

Oh, and I never pre-cook the noodles. Unnecessary if you layer it right, so that there’s enough moisture above and below the noodles (I believe the cottage cheese / egg mixture helps this). They come out just right.

18

Egg is bad in lasagne. It should not be. Use whatever cheese you want, but egg is not good on so many levels. It’s too easy to scramble, and eggy scrambly lasagna is not so good.

Have you tried, perhaps, making a bechemal sauce instead of just using raw cheeses?

It goes like this:

A couple of tablespoons of butter, melted. Mix in the same of flour until you get a roux. Cook off for a little until it’s not so floury-looking, then slowly pour in some milk, mixing until smooth and you’ve got the quantity you want. Stir over a mid-low heat until thickened, then dump in the cheese of your choice. Alternate in layers in the lasagne until all used up.

Hubby loves it when I make lasagne from scratch. My meat sauce has minced beef, bacon, tomatoes, herbs and garlic. Sometimes chilli. Layer that with the bechemal and the pasta sheets and then bake until done (usually however long the packet of instant sheets says). Tasty.

19

Also, given your other ingredients, I have a sneaking suspicion you might be using low fat versions of the cheeses, or “part skim” or something. Don’t.

I also use sausage with my ground beef. And, for a whole lasagna (enough to go with two boxes of noodles) I’ll use at least 2 pounds of meat.

20

People who DON’T take 2 hours to cook their meals say “life is too short”.

They usually have TV shows to get to.

No matter how long I’ve ever spent on a meal, I’ve never felt a second of it was wasted time.