Take it Easy

Lasagna is a dish that a lot of people don't attempt to make because it looks difficult to assemble, and is time consuming. Lasagna can be time consuming, but in all honesty I don't think it takes a long time to assemble. The lengthiest part of lasagna making is the baking time and in that hour you can easily accomplish many other household tasks.
I don't use a recipe for lasagna. From reading recipes, and trying other people's lasagna I developed my own.


I start off by making the sauce:

1) Cook 3 or 4 strips of chopped bacon in a large skillet/saucepan. Remove bacon

2) add a chopped onion and a chopped carrot to the bacon fat and saute until onion is soft, about 2 minutes. Add in one or two minced cloves of garlic, cook for another minute. I add a tbsp or so of tomato paste at this point and let it coat the vegetables. Set the veggies aside with the bacon.

3) In the now empty skillet, add a pound of ground meat. I used beef, but you can use beef, veal, pork or a mix of them.

4) When the ground meat is cooked, add the veggie/bacon mix back to the skillet. Pour in a large can of whole plum tomatoes. (I puree the tomatoes first in a food processor because I don't like large tomato chunks, if you like the chunks just add the tomatoes to the pan and break them up with a spoon). At this point add some seasonings and flavorings, such as dried basil, dried oregano, garlic powder, chili flakes, salt, pepper, or cayenne pepper. I had some leftover chipotles from the tacos so I chopped a couple up and added them to the sauce.

5) In a casserole or baking pan place a bit of the sauce so it covers the bottom. This is so the bottom layer of pasta will absorb the liquid and cook. Layer oven ready lasagna noodles so they cover the bottom of the casserole. *Use oven ready lasagna noodles! Why waste time cooking the noddles first???*
On top of the noodles place a layer of the meat sauce, then a layer of ricotta cheese, and a layer of mozzarella cheese, and then noodles. Repeat. On top of the third layer of noodles place a thin layer of sauce. I prefer my lasagna to have a harder, sort of crunchier outside edge so I don't cover the entire top layer of noodles with sauce. Then cover that with mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese. Bake for an hour @ 350 F

Below is the picture of my lasagna. Because of not covering the top noodles with sauce my lasagna is considerably browner than it would be. I also don't cover mine in the oven. You could cover it for half of the baking time and it would yield softer top noodles.