How to cook lasagna at home: a step by step recipe with photos

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Do you remember Garfield - a fluffy sunny cat with an excellent appetite? But why is it about the cat? Because Garfield's favorite dish was lasagna. He devoured her on both cheeks and was ready for any madness for her.

And for good reason: properly cooked lasagna is tasty, juicy, soft and savory. In addition, this dish can have several embodiments, so it is perfect for gourmets who refuse meat for one reason or another.

How to cook lasagna at home, so that even connoisseurs of this dish will be delighted with it, will be described in this article.

Where, when and how did this wonderful dish originate?

The birthplace of lasagna is considered to be Italy - the country that gave the world pasta and pizza. However, the British are ready to argue with this statement. They credit the recipe to their culinary masters.

The arguments of both sides are very reasonable.

Let's see what the arguments areItalians and English to confirm authorship.

Motherland - Italy

The following facts speak in favor of the Italian roots of the dish:

• The inhabitants of Rome adopted the recipe for making a round flat cake (namely, this is what lasagna looked like earlier) from the Greeks. The Romans cut the finished cake into strips and called them Lagani.
• The second version also sees a trace of the Greeks in the origin of the dish, but at the same time claims that the name came from the vessel, the pot oven, in which the food was cooked - Lasanon.

Years passed, and the name was modified into Lasanum, familiar to modern man.

Homeland - England

The arguments of the British, who consider lasagna to be their dish, have the following grounds: in the 14th century, Loseyns dish existed in England. The recipe is even mentioned in one of the oldest books in the country.

Despite everything, the authorship still remains with Naples. It was there that the first mention of how to cook delicious lasagna at home was found. The recipe indicated that layers of dough, boiled until half cooked, must be shifted with a mixture of cheese and spices.

For almost eight centuries of existence, the recipe for making lasagna has undergone numerous changes, but one thing has remained unchanged - the excellent soft and pleasant taste of the finished dish.

Now every housewife is probably thinking about how to cook lasagna at home.

Method of making lasagna dough

The following recipe will help you learn how tocook lasagna sheets at home. Home sheets are certainly more troublesome, but less expensive and, more importantly, more useful than store ones.

What you need:

• 400 grams of wheat flour;
• 3 eggs;
• 50 ml olive oil;
• a teaspoon of s alt.

Cooking lasagna at home! A step-by-step recipe for lasagna dough is presented below.

Step one. Mix all the ingredients at the same time.

Step two. We knead the dough. Of course, it is ideal to do this with a mixer, but you can also do it manually. The dough should be tough. The whole process will take half an hour - when kneading by hand.

Step three. We send the dough to a cold place for twenty minutes. This will help him become more elastic.

Step four. To prevent the dough from sticking to your hands, knead it by adding a little flour. After that, roll out into a layer 2 mm thick.

Step five. Boil the lasagne sheets in s alted water for one minute. We finish everything by dipping the sheets in cold water with oil. Put the boiled leaves on a sieve so that the water is glass. So that they do not dry out during the preparation of other components, you can put them on a damp towel.

That's it: the lasagne sheets are ready. It's just a matter of filling and sauce, but we'll come back to this point a little later.

Recipe based on ready-made lasagne sheets

Of course, make lasagna dough at homenot difficult, but, you see, it takes a lot of time, which many housewives simply do not have. That is why large supermarkets rush to the rescue, offering a fairly large range of ready-made products.

This recipe provides information on how easy it is to make lasagna at home using store-bought sheets.

What you need:

• 700 grams of beef or veal meat;
• 1 onion;
• 1 large bell pepper;
• 800 grams blanched tomatoes;
• 100 grams of tomato paste;
• 2 garlic cloves;
• 50 grams of flour;
• 50 grams of butter;
• 600 milliliters of milk;
• a quarter teaspoon ground nutmeg;
• 500 grams of hard cheese;
• 250 grams of dough;
• we take seasonings to taste - oregano, basil, Provence herbs.

The above set of products allows you to achieve the delicious classic taste of Bolognese lasagna.

So, how to cook lasagna at home? Read on for the step-by-step recipe!

Filling: meat stew bolognese

Step one. Grind the meat with a meat grinder into minced meat. It is better to use a mixture of beef and veal. In this case, the dish will turn out softer and more tender. Why is it so important to roll the meat yourself? Is it really impossible to cook lasagna at home from minced meat purchased? It turns out you can't. Or rather, you can, but the taste of the finished dish is unlikely towill please, as the quality of the store product always leaves much to be desired. And since minced meat is the main part of the bolognese sauce, it must be perfect.

Step two. Finely chop vegetables, including onions, garlic and bell peppers.

Step three. Let's start sautéing chopped vegetables. We do this in a frying pan or saucepan with a thick bottom. Fry in sunflower or olive oil.

Step four. When the onion becomes transparent, add the rolled minced meat to the vegetables.

Step five. While the minced meat reaches the state we need (we determine by the shade - the minced meat should turn gray), let's take care of the blanched tomatoes. It is necessary to remove the skin from them and mash them into a puree.

Step six. Combine minced meat with vegetables and crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and oregano.

Step seven. Simmer until the excess juice is gone.

As a result, we get an excellent filling for lasagna - meat bolognese.

Now let's start making the sauce.

Bechamel sauce: step by step recipe

Cooking lasagna at home is almost impossible if you don't know the basics of kneading bechamel sauce. But don't be scared - the process is not as difficult as it might seem.

Step one. Melt fifty grams of butter in a saucepan. Add fifty grams of flour to it. Mix well and fry: the flour should acquire a beautiful golden hue. It is important to constantly monitor the condition of the ingredients in the pan, while not forgetting to stir: otherwiseavoid burning. When the flour turns golden, the lasagne roux is ready.

Step two. Now milk. It must be heated in another saucepan.

Step three. Pour the milk in a thin stream into the saucepan with the prepared “roux”. Important conditions: minimum fire, constant stirring.

Step four. Add nutmeg, stir again with a whisk and remove from heat.

That's it: the béchamel sauce is ready.

Let's start assembling the lasagna.

Assembling lasagna

Ready sheets for lasagna lightly boil in s alted water. Then we begin to lay out the dish in layers.

Step one. Lightly coat the bottom of the baking dish with béchamel sauce. Sprinkle with a thin layer of grated cheese.

Step two. Place a sheet of dough on top. Coat with bechamel sauce.

Step three. Spread a thin layer of bolognese over the dough.

Step four. More cheese and dough.

Step five. You should get about five layers, the last of which must be greased with sauce, sprinkled with cheese.

Put the lasagna together on top with foil and put it in the oven to bake. The baking process at 220 degrees and the presence of foil will take half an hour. After this time, remove the foil and leave the dish to bake for another ten minutes.

Appetizing, ruddy and juicy lasagna is ready!

Lasagna with vegetable sauce and sour cream sauce

In the hot summer season, when meat is seen as a heavy and fatty product, you cancook lasagna with vegetables. It will contain bechamel sauce, similarly to meat. So, are you ready to learn how to cook lasagna at home? The recipe is quite simple and will not make you stand at the stove for a long time. You will need about half an hour of free time. And from the moment the preparation starts to the long-awaited tasting, only an hour and a half will pass.

What do you need to make vegetable lasagna?

For the base:

• 12 sheets of prepared or homemade pasta;
• 50 grams of hard cheese (preferably parmesan).

For vegetable sauce:

• 1 medium zucchini;
• 2 sweet bell peppers;
• 3 ripe tomatoes;
• 1 carrot;
• 3 garlic cloves;
• 1 onion;
• 50 ml olive oil;
• a few sprigs of herbs (parsley, dill).
• 50 ml dry white wine;
• we take spices to taste: Provence herbs, nutmeg, basil, oregano, savory;
• a teaspoon of sugar;

For sour cream sauce:

• 20 grams of butter;
• 10 grams of flour;
• half a glass of sour cream;
• a glass of meat or vegetable broth;
• s alt and ground pepper.

Vegetable Lasagne Sauce Step by Step

If you are thinking about how to cook lasagna at home, and intend to cook vegetable lasagna, then the sauce recipe below will be a real lifesaver. Its advantage in incomparable taste along withsimplicity and speed of preparation.

How to cook lasagna at home? Photos used as illustrations and detailed recipes will help hostesses build this culinary masterpiece! So let's get started!

Step one. Vegetables, including zucchini, tomato and pepper, are peeled. So the structure of the sauce will be more tender and homogeneous.

How to peel a pepper? The surface of the pepper must be oiled, pierced in one place with a knife. And, placing on a plate, bake in the microwave at full power for 6 minutes. Don't have this kitchen helper? Place the fruit in the oven.

Remove the peel from the tomatoes is also not difficult: make a cross-shaped incision from the side of the "butt" and pour over the vegetable with boiling water. After this procedure, the skin will be easily removed.

Step two. Chop the onion into small cubes. Place in a skillet with olive oil and stir until translucent. The golden hue is not only undesirable, but not recommended: remember that the lasagna will subsequently be baked in the oven.

Step three. Carrots, chopped through a grater, add sautéed to the onion.

Step four. Finely chop the peeled and seeded tomatoes and peppers and send them to the pan with onions and carrots.

Step five. Add spices: oregano, basil, savory. Also now it is necessary to send garlic to the pan: chop it through a crusher.

Step six. It was the turn of wine and finely chopped greens. By the way, wine can be substitutedbroth or even plain water if you are against alcohol. Stew over low heat for a quarter of an hour.

Step seven. Finely chopped zucchini, peeled and peeled, put in a pan and simmer for another half an hour.

After half an hour, the vegetable sauce or, as you might think, the classic vegetable stew is completely ready. The main condition is that the liquid in the sauce should be present only in the form of vegetable juice, the other is unacceptable. Otherwise the lasagna will float.

Sour cream sauce

How to cook lasagna with sour cream sauce at home? Just like any other. The only difference is the sauce.

Step one. Melt the butter in a pan and immediately add flour to it: bring it to a delicious golden hue.

Step two. Add broth to flour. Stir, achieving complete uniformity.

Step three. Now add sour cream and mix again. Simmer for about seven minutes.

It remains only to season to taste - and the sour cream sauce will be completely ready.

Collecting vegetable paste

Since the recipe calls for the use of ready-made sheets, it is worth mentioning that they do not stick together when boiled, so it is permissible to boil them together.

Important! Choose a baking dish 20% wider than uncooked pasta - the sheets swell and increase during cooking.

Let's start assembling the lasagna!

Step one. We coat the baking dish with butter, after which we distribute two tablespoons of vegetable sauce along the bottom - this step will help protect the sheetsfrom burning and sticking.

Step two. Sauces - sour cream and vegetable - are visually divided into five parts (there will be five layers in lasagna).

Step three. On the vegetable sauce, lay out two sheets - one after the other - of boiled pasta.

Step four. We coat the pasta with sour cream sauce, which, in turn, is covered with a layer of vegetable.

Step five. We coat the last layer only with sour cream sauce. We do it carefully and, if the amount of sauce allows, in a thick layer.

Step six. Sprinkle everything on top with grated cheese.

After half an hour of baking at 220 degrees, remove the vegetable lasagna from the oven.

So the step-by-step recipe has come to its logical conclusion. Now you know how to cook lasagna at home, you can start consolidating knowledge in practice!

Lasagna Tips

In conclusion, here are some recommendations for cooking lasagna.:

Tip one. Using homemade pasta, roll it out thinly - no thicker than 1.5-2 millimeters. Form - long, even and wide stripes. Homemade lasagne pasta cannot be stored for a long time.

Tip two. Sheets should be laid crosswise. We lay out one layer in one direction, the next in the other. Why is this needed? This will make the lasagna firmer and won't fall apart when served.

Tip three. For lasagna, it is better to use parmesan and mozzarella. They will give the dish a spicy spiciness and unsurpassed tenderness.

Andfor sweets - for children. There is even lasagna, which is usually served for dessert. It is also made from pasta, just berries, cottage cheese and cream are most often used for the filling.