Lasagna.

Simple Lasagna

Tami Fife

1 pound ground beef

2 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese

15 ounces Ricotta cheese

½ cup parmesan cheese

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

1 egg

26 ounce spaghetti sauce

1 cup water

12 lasagna noodles, uncooked

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Brown meat in large skillet on medium-high heat.

Mix 1 ¼ cups of mozzarella cheese, ricotta cheese, ¼ cups parmesan cheese, the parsley and egg until well blended, set aside.

Dain meat, return to skillet.  Stir in spaghetti sauce.  Pour water into empty sauce jar; cover and shake well.  Add to skillet; stir until well blended.  Adding water to the sauce helps cook traditional noodles during baking, so you don’t have to cook them beforehand.  This save you 15-20 minutes or prep time.

Spread one cup of the meat sauce onto the bottom of 13-9 inch baking dish; top with a layer of 3 uncooked lasagna noodles.  Noodles will expand to fit the dish during baking.

Spread 1/3 of the ricotta cheese mixture and 1 cup of the meat sauce over noodles.  Repeat layers two more times.  Top with remaining 3 noodles and the remaining meat sauce.

Sprinkle with remaining 1 ¼ cups mozzarella cheese and remaining ¼ cup parmesan cheese.  Cover tightly with greased foil.  Bake 45 minutes. Remove foil; continue baking 15 minutes or until heated through.  Let stand 15 minutes before cutting to serve.

* A few changes I (Camille) made to this recipe.  You can use 1 pound ground Turkey instead of ground beef  for a healthier option.  I find that I need to use more spices when I cook with ground Turkey.  Also, I like to add some sausage (like Jimmy Dean) to my lasagna for more spice/taste.


One last thing, I made the lasagna in two smaller glass pans and froze one (thanks Tami for the idea).