I was lucky enough to go to Italy when I was younger for a school trip, and while there, had the most amazing lasagna at a little diner in Rome. After years of trial and error, I have managed to PERFECTLY recreate the flavor! Also I have perfected making it ahead of time and freezing it, makes for an amazing dinner to have ready to when you don’t feel like cooking, but also want to avoid take-out.

Notes: Barilla makes an amazing GF no boil lasagna noodle, highly recommend it for this recipe. You can use whatever pasta sauce you prefer, but I find the Trader Joe’s Basil Marinara is the best fit for this recipe. (I don’t have promos for either of these, just the brands I prefer for this recipe.)

Ingredients

• MEAT SAUCE
  • Olive Oil
  • 4 oz chopped pancetta
  • 1.5 oz ground beef
  • 2 jars (24 oz each) Trader Joes Basil Marinara
• WHITE SAUCE
  • 8 oz white mushrooms
  • 1 cup powdered parmesan
  • 1 cup 2% milk
  • 5 oz frozen spinach (defrosted)
  • 3 Tbs unsalted butter
  • 1/2 Tbs black pepper
  • 1/2 Tbs dried oregano
  • 32 oz low fat ricotta
• LASAGNA
  • 1 pack no boil lasagna
  • Shredded Mozzarella

Instructions

• MEAT SAUCE
  • Sauté pancetta in olive oil. Remove pancetta, leaving grease in pan to fry beef. Once cooked, add pancetta back in, along with marinara. Simmer over medium heat until flavors combine (about 10 minutes).
• WHITE SAUCE
  • Melt butter in skillet over medium heat, sauté mushrooms until tender and reduced by half. Once done, put in bowl with all other white sauce ingredients and fold together with a rubber spatula.
• LASAGNA
  • Preheat oven per noodle package instructions. Spray baking dish with spray oil.
  • Add thin layer of meat sauce, then noodles, then white sauce. Repeat until done. Top with shredded mozzarella.
  • Bake per no bake noodle package instructions.

FREEZER PREP: Assemble the lasagnas in disposable aluminum bread loaf pans, wrap in plastic wrap, then aluminum foil, and freeze for future use (do this BEFORE baking). To cook from frozen, remove wrapping from lasagna, leaving in pan; cover pan with aluminum foil. Put in oven before turning it on, set the oven to preheat to 350 F, so the lasagna will defrost as the oven preheats. Once the oven preheats, bake for 1.5 hours covered with aluminum foil. When timer goes off, remove the aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool and serve.

Yield: 6 lasagnas

ALTERNATE FLAVORS: You can change up the flavor of the lasagna by doing the following:

1. Alfredo – make up 1 batch of the white sauce, add 1 lb of grilled chicken, shredded, and 1/2 lb crispy bacon.
2. Seafood – make up 1 batch of the white sauce, add 1 small container cooked crab and 1 small container cooked lobster meat. Also add 1 jar of Trader Joe’s vodka pasta sauce.
3. Cajun – wait for my Cajun pasta recipe and will link it here!

Miscellaneous: just some other stuff that has happened or will happen soon!

• The Pokemon 30th Anniversary just happened, I have spent the past month updating the Perler Pit with a ton of new listings, check it out if you are interested!
• Saturday, March 7th, The Workhouse Arts Institute will be running their first Comicworx event, basically a mini-Comicon; and the Perler Pit got a booth! Swing on by, I will also be handing out free cookies ahead of a future recipe post.