Josh

After talking about my lasagna making skillz (yes, with a z, that’s how good I am) on 9rules notes, I’ve decided to share it with the world. It literally is the best lasagna I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating, if I do say so myself. This recipe came from my mom, who got it from my grandma, who got it from her mom, who got it from her mom, so this goes back a long time. I should mention that I don’t measure anything out, so you’ll have to go by my description of things, which might not be the best, but if you have any questions, ask in the comments or e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do. I’ve broken it down into 3 parts: sauce, lasagna, meatballs. Real Italians don’t put meat in their lasagna. It takes away from the taste of the lasagna. Here it is. If you try it out, let me know how it turned out. If you need a pic for reference…use this. It looks exactly like how it should look. I’ll try to get photos of my own.

Sauce

1. Get a big pot and fill it a quarter of an inch deep with some olive oil, let the oil heat up a bit. You want it to be at least covering the bottom, plus a little more.
2. Take some garlic, slice the cloves, make them kind of thick, and throw them in the oil. Turn down the heat and let the garlic slowly roast.
3. The garlic will turn a bit brown, when this happens, chop up some onions and put them in there. Let them become soft.
4. Take your canned tomato sauce (I get the big cans, not the size that you usually buy canned veggies in) and tomato paste (small cans) and pour it in. Rule of thumb: For every big can of tomato sauce, use one small can of paste.
5. Take your empty cans and fill em up with water. Put them in the sauce. You want your sauce to be just a bit thicker than the water. You don’t want it to be too thick, otherwise the lasagna will take forever to cook and the noodles will be dry as hell.
6. Let it cook on low heat for awhile. Stirring occasionally.
7. OPTIONAL: About an hour into cooking, throw in some sugar and some red wine. Do it to taste, don’t measure it out! Make sure to use a really good quality red wine if you decide to put that in, NOT cooking wine.
8. Take a rest, but keep stirring occasionally. It’ll take a bit to cook depending on how much you make.

Meatballs

1. 1 pound of ground beef.
2. 1 large egg
3. 1 cup of bread crumbs (preferably Italian seasoned)
4. 1/2 cup milk or abouts there.
5. 1 cup of parmesagne cheese
6. Mix it all together.
7. Make into balls.
8. Fry them in oil. If you want, you can put these in the sauce and let them soak up some of the sauce. Make sure that the meatballs are cooked all the way through, otherwise they’ll end up a bit tough if you put them in the sauce not fully cooked.
9. If putting the meatballs in sauce, dump them in there about an hour and a half after starting the sauce.
10. Your done.

Lasagna

You are going to need a CRAPLOAD of sauce if you’re going to make lasagna. When making lasagna, use 4 of the BIG cans of tomato sauce, but keep extra on hand just in case. Whatever is left over, you can freeze and warm up as needed. It lasts for months.

Ricotta Mixture

1. Container of ricotta. I usually get two of the small ones or one big one because I like a lot of cheese.
2. 1 large egg.
3. Oregano, about a palm-full.
4. Mix.

Lasagna

1. For one pan of lasagna, use 1 box of lasagna noodles…I always make like half a box extra just in case. Cook the noodles in water, salt it a bit for flavor, add some oil so the noodles don’t stick together.
2. Take a cake pan, coat the bottom with some sauce.
3. Place the noodles over the sauce. Cover the noodles with sauce. Just a bit though.
4. Spoon out Ricotta over the sauce. You can space it out a bit, the ricotta will spread out when cooking, but it won’t spread out that much.
5. Cover the ricotta with mozzarella cheese. You can use shredded or slice it yourself. Cover in sauce. Top it with some parmesagn cheese.
6. Repeat steps 3, 4, 5 until the pan is full.
7. On the last layer, just putt he noodles on top, with a bit of sauce and some parmesagn cheese.
8. Cover the pan with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. But, check it now and then. When you can slide a paring knife through the middle of the pan and it goes in smoothly, it’s done.
9. Let it cool down for about 30 minutes, eat it. Enjoy.




Categorized as Food