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Lasagna β a delicious Italian dish
Lasagna is an Italian dish, which is based on some simple ingredients, but which, put together, manage to create a fabulous dish. Its basic ingredients are:
– The meat sauce – it can be a meat ragu sauce, a Bolognese sauce, using minced beef, turkey, pork, or a mixture of two or more types of minced meat;
– Bechamel Sauce β a delicious sauce based on flour, milk, butter and spices, and its complete recipe can be found HERE;
– Grated cheese – which can be mozzarella, salted cheese, or a hard cheese like Gruyere, Parmesan, or other types of cheese;
– Lasagna sheets β these are pastas that have the shape of thin sheets, which can be fresh or dry.
Lasagna can also be cooked in a vegetarian version, with spinach and ricotta, or any other combination of vegetables and cheese.
The classic recipe is the one with meat sauce, Bechamel Sauce and cheese, and I have chosen to present you a kids friendly version of this delicious dish.
Kids friendly Lasagna
The kids friendly version of the famous Italian dish, as I will present it below, has the particularity of containing many vegetables in the composition of the meat sauce. Basically, in the following lines, you can find a slightly modified recipe for the meat sauce that is the basis of this dish.
So, I chose to cook this meat sauce using a variety of vegetables, which have the ultimate goal of obtaining an intense taste, and obviously a considerable intake of vitamins and minerals.
The vegetables I chose to use to prepare this sauce are: white onion, red onion, garlic, mushrooms, carrots. In addition to these, you can add, according to your preferences, red pepper, eggplant, zucchini, butternut squash or other vegetables that you especially like. All these ingredients already mentioned will acquire a sensational flavor after being cooked in homemade tomato juice. Obviously you can also use store bought tomato juice, but I find that homemade tomato juice has a more intense ripe tomato flavor than store bought one, which usually has a lot of water added, and is thus quite diluted.
I have mentioned this on other occasions, but now I will repeat it: the creaminess of the Italian dish is due to the use of Bechamel sauce, but if you want to give up this sauce, in case you are cooking for very young children and you are not comfortable with the idea of offering them a sauce based on boiled flour, I suggest you to replace the Bechamel Sauce with sour cream. I used this trick for the first 3 years of my daughter Sofia’s life. Obviously, the final taste is much more pleasant when you choose to use Bechamel Sauce, but in the end it is everyone’s choice how they cook for themselves or for their family.
Assembling the final product
The secret to obtaining a successful Lasagna dish is to alter the layers with the ingredients that are the basis of this preparation in the most practical way, which ensures the taste and texture of the final preparation.
Personally, I always choose to assemble the Lasagna in a generous pan, shallow enough but also tall enough to allow all the layers to be placed in the right proportion.
So, after oiling the pan, I will place a thin layer of meat sauce on the bottom of the pan, followed by a layer of lasagna sheets. On top of the pasta layer I will place a layer of Bechamel Sauce, then meat sauce, then grated cheese. After I managed to form this “foundation”, I can continue with alternating layers in the same way, as already described: lasagna sheets, then Bechamel sauce, then meat sauce and finally the grated cheese layer.
The top of the dish, the top layer, before putting the product into the oven, should be a layer of cheese, which will melt wonderfully at the high temperature from the oven.
In case you are confused, I’m sure the video below will help you understand more easily how the layers of ingredients for Lasagna should be laid out.
With that being said, bon appetite and please share your thoughts on this wonderful dish in the comments section.
Full Recipe – Lasagna
You can find the video recipe below.
Lasagna Recipe
Equipment
- 1 Crockpot Express Multicooker
- 1 Oven Tray
- 1 Oven
Ingredients
- Ground beef meat;
- Onion;
- Garlic;
- Mushrooms;
- Carrots;
- Salt/ Black Pepper/ Sweet Paprika;
- Vegetable Oil;
- Tomato Juice;
- Water;
- Bechamel Sauce;
- Cheese Mozzarella;
Instructions
- First, select the Program Brown/ Sautee on your Crockpot for 15 minutes;
- Once the pot is heated, pour some vegetable oil and add the vegetables (without the mushrooms). Add some salt, black pepper and sweet paprika and mix them well.
- After 5 minutes, add the ground beef meat. Add salt and pepper as you prefer.
- Once the program is finished, add the mushrooms.
- Then, add the tomato juice. If you think the sauce needs more liquid, add some water.
- Close the lid and select the Slow cooking program, using High temperature for 4h 30 min. If you are in a hurry, you can also choose the MEAT program and cook the meat sauce with high pressure.
Once the meat sauce is ready, we can start assembling the lasagna dish like this:
- Using a greased tray, put a layer of meat sauce, then add the lasagna sheets;
- On top of the lasagna layer, add a layer of Bechamel sauce;
- Then add the meat sauce layer again and some cheese (I like to use mozzarella).
- We continue to repeat this process until we use all the ingredients.
- Take into consideration that in the top we have to put Bechamel sauce, followed by meat sauce and cheese. The top layer of cheese should be consistent.
- Once you finished assembling the lasagna dish, cook it in the oven for 45-50 minutes at 180β.
Video
Nutrition
Enjoy!
I cooked this meat sauce in the CrockPot Express Multicooker, but you can definitely cook it using a pot on the stove. Please remember that you donβt need to buy the kitchen gadgets that you see in my video recipes, because the final result can be obtained also by cooking in the traditional way.
Keep up the good work
Best wishes