Italy many associate with pizza, pasta and LASAGNE. And if you don’t surprise anyone with pizza now, then lasagna has not yet gained such wide popularity, although it deserves it!
Now you can easily try lasagna in any cafe or restaurant. But, my advice to you - try to cook lasagna at home, and you will never order it in a cafe again, because home is better!
Yes, lasagna is a bit time consuming to prepare, it will take you a couple of hours to cook it. But I will give you one more piece of advice, and if you listen, you will be just happy (sorry for immodest, but I myself am delighted with this idea)!
And the little secret is that if you still have to tinker with cooking, then you should cook a large portion or even two portions (well, about two, maybe I'm too far apart) Cook as much as you can eat - eat it, and the rest is lasagna divide it into portions, pack it in cling film, bags, molds - as you like, and put it in the freezer (naturally, the lasagna should be cooled well beforehand; in addition, only when it is cold it can be cut into even beautiful pieces, and when it is hot or warm you will never cut it beautifully). And when you come home from work and you don’t have time to bother with cooking, frozen lasagna will come to your rescue! Just release it from the packaging and put it in the oven for 30 minutes. While you change clothes, wash your hands, set the table and invite your husband and children to the table (you can still have time to cut a salad of fresh vegetables), the lasagna will already warm up, you just have to wish your loved ones Bon appetit!
Another practical tip for reducing cooking time is to split the cooking time into 2 days. On the first day, prepare the sauces, cool and put in the refrigerator. And the next day, assemble and bake the lasagna. You will do all this in between times, and the result will be gorgeous !!!
And finally, if you want to cook lasagna for guests, also prepare the ingredients for lasagna in advance, completely assemble it, sprinkle with cheese, tighten with cling film and put in the refrigerator. Those. the day before, in the evening you prepared everything. And the next day, all you have to do is transfer the lasagna from the refrigerator to the oven, set the table, wait for guests and receive compliments!
P.S. Just remember that lasagna is difficult to cut into even pieces when hot. Just accept it as a fact, stock up on a SHARP knife and cut it smartly without bothering with the evenness of the pieces. After all, the main thing in lasagna is its amazing homemade taste!
Ingredients
| Form size: 20x20 cm | |
|---|---|
| lasagne sheets (dry) | 6-10 pcs |
| cheese (Russian type) | 300 g |
| For the Bolognese sauce | |
| minced meat (beef and pork) | 600-700 g |
| 5-6 ripe tomatoes or 400 g peeled tomatoes in their own juice | |
| dry white or red wine | 100 ml |
| onion | 2-3 pcs |
| garlic | 2 cloves |
| butter | 1-2 tbsp |
| vegetable oil | 4-5 tbsp |
| parsley or basil | |
| salt | |
| freshly ground pepper | |
| For sauce | |
| milk | 800-1000 ml |
| butter | 80-100 g |
| flour | 80-100 g |
| nutmeg | on the tip of a knife |
| salt | |
| freshly ground pepper | |
Although the name of the dish itself comes from the Greek word "lasana", which means "hot plates", this dish has always been and remains a traditional recipe for Italian cuisine. There are many variations of this delicious and very satisfying dish, but the most traditional and popular is Bolognese lasagna. This dish uses a strictly defined set of ingredients, but we will deviate a little from the recipe, but at the same time we will prepare no less tasty original lasagna. In this article we will give a detailed photo recipe for classic lasagna.
Classic Lasagna Ingredients:
For test:
- Flour - 300 g
- Egg - 3 pcs.
For the bechamel sauce:
- Butter - 2 tbsp. l.
- Flour - 1 cup
- Milk - 1 glass
For the bolognese sauce
- Minced pork and beef - 500 g
- Onion - 2 pcs.
- Tomato - 5 pcs.
- Garlic - 2-3 cloves
- Parsley
- Pepper
- Hard cheese - 200 g
- Vegetable oil
Photo-recipe for classic lasagna
Cooking dough for lasagna
Let's start by making the lasagna dough. You can safely skip this process by buying blanks in any store, but it’s better to do everything yourself, because it will turn out tastier, cheaper and much more useful. So, mix the flour with eggs in a bowl, add salt and knead until a homogeneous dough is obtained.
You need to knead for a long time and carefully, the dough is quite dense. If during kneading it seems that it is too hard or does not knead well, then you can add a small amount of water.
After kneading, put the dough in a bag and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
While the dough is in the fridge, let's prepare the sauce. It is better to start with the bolognese sauce, because the béchamel must not cool down, otherwise it will be covered with a harsh crust.
Preparing bolognese sauce
Finely chop the onion and fry it in vegetable oil.
When the onion softens a little, add minced meat to it and mix well.
Stew minced meat under the lid, but do not fry it until fully cooked.
Rub the tomatoes on a coarse grater, or grind in a blender and add to the minced meat, along with grated garlic. Mix everything thoroughly.
A huge plus of lasagna is that all the ingredients must be half cooked, as in the end the dish is baked in the oven. Simmer for 5 minutes, turn off, add chopped parsley, mix and leave under a closed lid.
This sauce can be served with almost any side dish, best with pasta, as the dish is Italian. But we'll save it for our lasagna.
Let's go back to our test. We roll it into a kind of sausage and divide it into 4 identical parts, since in classic lasagna there are 3 layers of filling.
Next, you should roll out the dough, and here one more plus of self-preparation of cakes is revealed: you can make lasagna in any shape convenient for you, and not be limited to rectangular purchased plates. The dough should be rolled out as thin as possible.
We cut out the sheets of the shape we need and, for the convenience of further preparation, we divide the cakes into several parts.
Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan, add salt and add a few tablespoons of vegetable or olive oil to it.
We dip our cakes in boiling water, and carefully unfold them so that they do not stick together.
The dough is cooked quickly, literally in 2 minutes, and it turns out very dense. Having pulled out the finished boiled cake, you should immediately lower it into cold water.
After that, the sheet of dough needs to be dried, so we put it on paper napkins or a towel.
Having cooked all the cakes, put them aside and proceed to the last component of our lasagna - bechamel sauce.
Preparing bechamel sauce
In the original, bechamel sauce is made with white wine, but for the first time, let's start with a simplified and non-alcoholic version.
Immediately heat the milk in a separate saucepan, but do not bring to a boil.
Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat.
Slowly add the flour to the melted butter, stirring constantly.
Fry for a few minutes, add some salt and pour in the milk, stirring constantly.
The finished sauce resembles semolina in consistency, has practically no taste, but in combination with “bolognese” it turns out very tasty.
Well, all the ingredients are ready, you can start assembling the finished dish.
The form for lasagna should be chosen with high sides, both a saucepan and a frying pan without plastic elements are suitable. The bottom can be left unoiled, as the lasagna is very juicy and most likely nothing will burn. We spread the finished sheets on the bottom of the form.
Lubricate them with bechamel sauce.
Spread the bolognese sauce on top and spread evenly over the entire area of the cake.
We cover the top with another cake and repeat the procedure until we get 3 identical layers.
Lubricate the top layer with bechamel sauce, sprinkle with grated cheese and send to the oven for 15-20 minutes.
When the cheese is browned, you can take out the lasagna, call everyone to the table and enjoy this Italian dish.
If you are “friends” with unleavened dough, then cooking homemade lasagna will be absolutely no problem for you. If kneading the dough is problematic for you, then buy special dry sheets for lasagna. In any case, the dish you will get is very tasty and original.
Homemade lasagna dough
Do the dough like this:
- Sift through a sieve 600 g of wheat flour.
- Beat two eggs into the flour and pour in 50 ml of vegetable oil, preferably olive. Season the mixture with a pinch of salt.
- Mix flour with eggs and butter and start kneading the dough, gradually adding water at room temperature (approximately 150-180 ml) into it.
- When the dough becomes homogeneous and elastic, wrap it in cling film and put it in the refrigerator to stand (30-40 minutes).
- Before cooking, divide the dough into 6-8 parts and roll each very thinly by hand or using a special machine. Try to roll out the sheets in the shape of the dish in which you will bake the lasagna.
Ready lasagna sheets
They are sold in any major supermarket and are in the pasta section. Before cooking, these dry sheets should be dipped in boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes - they will become elastic and will absorb the sauce well.
homemade lasagna recipe
The classic filling for lasagna is made from ground beef:
- Chop two onions and three cloves of garlic and fry them in a mixture of olive oil and butter.
- When frying, add one grated carrot and a handful of fresh parsley.
- Put 300 g of raw minced meat to the prepared vegetables and stew everything together until the meat brightens.
- Add 1 cup of hot milk to the filling and simmer until almost all the liquid has evaporated.
- Grind through a sieve 4 pieces of fresh or in your own juice tomatoes.
- Pour the tomato mass to the minced meat with vegetables and add a couple of tablespoons of hot water.
- Salt and pepper the filling to taste and simmer for another 5-7 minutes.
White sauce for homemade lasagna
The juiciness of the dish is curled from the sauce. Prepare it like this:
- Melt 100 g of butter in a frying pan.
- Pour 75 g of flour into it and fry it until a characteristic nutty smell.
- Pour so much hot milk into the flour with butter so that the sauce turns out like medium-thick sour cream. Stir constantly while cooking.
- Salt the sauce, pepper and add a pinch of ground nutmeg.
How to bake homemade lasagna
Grease a small baking dish with olive oil. Pour one tablespoon of sauce into the bottom. Lay out the first sheet of dough on it. Distribute a sixth of the meat filling over the dough, and pour a small amount of sauce over it. Put the second layer of dough on the sauce and repeat the whole procedure again. Make 6 or 7 layers in this way (depending on the resulting amount of filling and sauce and the size of the cakes. Pour the last cake with plenty of sauce and send the lasagna to the oven, heated to 180-200 degrees. Bake the lasagna until it is covered with a golden crust.
Lasagna is served immediately after baking. Hot it is much tastier than standing even for half an hour. You can make the sauce and toppings for homemade lasagna in advance and keep them in the refrigerator until the final assembly of the dish.
lasagna(Italian: Lasagna) - a type of Italian pasta, which is layers of dough of their durum wheat, which are layered with a variety of fillings and baked. Lasagne is a traditional Italian dish and there are many variations of it. Today we will cook lasagne with minced meat and Bechamel sauce, and with the help of step by step recipe with photo you will cook the most delicious lasagna.
Ingredients
- minced meat (beef + pork) 1 kg
- lasagna sheets 180-200 g
- tomatoes 500 g
- carrot 150 g
- onion 200 g
- cheese 300 g
- parmesan cheese 50 g
- garlic 3-4 cloves
- vegetable oil
- salt
Bechamel sauce
- milk 1 liter
- butter 100 g
- flour 100 g
- nutmeg 1 teaspoon
Cooking
Peel the onion and chop finely. 
Peel the garlic cloves and press through a garlic press or finely chop. 
My carrots, peel and rub on a coarse grater. 
My tomatoes, remove the skin from them and grind in a blender or rub on a grater. 
In a large frying pan, heat a little vegetable oil and lightly fry the onion and garlic in it. 
Add carrots to the onion and fry them for a few more minutes. 
We spread the minced meat in the pan, salt, add spices to taste and continue to simmer for 15-20 minutes. 
Add the tomatoes to the minced meat, mix well and let it simmer for another 5 minutes, after which we remove the pan from the heat. 
Preparation of bechamel sauce
We put a small saucepan (it is better to use dishes with a thick bottom to avoid burning the sauce) on the fire, melt the butter in it. Add flour to butter and mix very well. 
The resulting mass is lightly fried. 
Pour milk in a thin stream, stirring all the time. It is necessary to mix the sauce very well so that no lumps remain. Continuing to stir, bring to a boil and leave to heat until the sauce thickens. Salt, add nutmeg, mix well again and remove from heat. 
We grate the cheese on a coarse grater, and the parmesan on a fine grater. 
For making lasagna, I use ready-made lasagna sheets. Before cooking, carefully read on the packaging how the manufacturer recommends using the sheets (do you need to pre-boil them or not), I take dry sheets without boiling them.
In a baking dish (I have it 22x30 cm in size), lay out the sheets of lasagna. 
Lay half of the minced meat on top. 
Spread 1/3 of the béchamel sauce evenly. 
Sprinkle with half of the grated cheese. Lay the lasagne sheets on top of the cheese again. Spread the remaining minced meat, cover with half of the remaining bechamel sauce. 
Sprinkle with the remaining half of the grated cheese, and place the lasagne sheets on top again. 
Cover the sheets with the remaining bechamel sauce. We put the form in the oven preheated to 180 ° C for 40-45 minutes. 
After the specified time, we take the lasagna out of the oven and sprinkle with grated parmesan and put in the oven for another 5-10 minutes. 
Lasagna is ready. Enjoy your meal! 
In fact, classic lasagna is a kind of cake, where the function of the cakes is performed by special sheets for lasagna (a kind of Italian pasta), and minced meat fried with tomatoes holds the bolognese cakes together. And lasagna can also be attributed to stuffed pasta, so popular in Italian cuisine - juicy, nutritious, satisfying. Divinely delicious!
A must-have attribute of classic lasagna is a delicate creamy bechamel sauce. I prepared it ahead of time.
Lasagna sheets are expensive in the store, and the composition includes only flour, egg and water, so I decided to make them myself. It didn't take long, but it turned out, I think, not worse. Cooking minced bolognese did not cause any problems at all. However, evaluate for yourself - a step-by-step recipe for classic lasagna with a photo so that there are no questions left. Use the recipe for health, help yourself, feed your loved ones and guests!)
Ingredients
Dough:
- egg 1 pc.
- flour 300 g
- vegetable oil 2 tbsp. l.
- cold water 40 ml
- pinch of salt
Filling:
- minced pork 400 g
- tomato paste 3 tbsp. l.
- onion 2 pcs.
- hard cheese 200 g
- bechamel sauce 500 ml
- vegetable oil 2 tbsp. l.
How to cook classic lasagna
- I prepare the necessary products. I made the béchamel sauce ahead of time.
I start by preparing the dough. A food processor will help me with this, which will mix everything in a matter of minutes. Pour flour and salt into the bowl, break the egg, pour in water and vegetable oil.
I mix everything for 5 minutes until a homogeneous tight dough is obtained.
Then I spread it on a table powdered with flour and begin to intensively knead with my hands for a few more minutes. As a result, the dough should not stick to your hands or to the table. I covered it with a towel and left it to rest for 20 minutes.
In the meantime, I worked on the filling - bolognese sauce. Onion cut into small pieces and fried in vegetable oil until soft, then put the minced meat in the pan.
She kept it on fire for 3-4 minutes, rubbing the lumps of meat with a spatula, because there should not be large pieces in the bolognese. Added tomato paste.
Bring the contents of the pan to a boil.
Now it's time to assemble the lasagna. The bottom of the mold (size 24x24 centimeters) was smeared with a small amount of bechamel sauce.
The dough was divided into 3 parts and rolled out each to a thickness of about 2 millimeters, cut the edges to fit the shape and laid the first layer. The scraps made another sheet of lasagna.
Laid out a third of the meat filling.
Topped with creamy sauce.
Sprinkled with grated cheese.
Thus, I collected all the lasagna, smeared the top sheet with bechamel and sprinkled with cheese.
Baked in the oven until the top began to brown. It took 35 minutes.
Before serving, I let the dish stand for a while so that the layers stick together better and it is more convenient to cut the lasagna.
On a note:
- when using ready-made lasagna sheets, follow the instructions on the package, they may need to be lowered into boiling water;
- instead of tomato paste, it is good to take fresh tomatoes;
- Bechamel sauce should be plenty so that the lasagna is well soaked and juicy.
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