Sunday Supper: Lasagna

Lasagna is one of those dishes that people have very specific feelings about. There are those who make it by the pan, freeze half, and consider it one of the great practical gifts a cook can give themselves or anyone else. There are the people who grew up eating it on Sunday and can still smell their grandmother's kitchen when someone mentions it. And finally, there are some who have never made it from scratch because it looks complicated from the outside and they have been meaning to get around to it for approximately fifteen years. This is for all of you!

This week, I’m bringing two recipes: the full 5-Cheese Meaty Lasagna that belongs on a Sunday table with company coming, and a Lasagna Soup that deserves its own conversation, because it captures every flavor of the original in a bowl and comes together in under an hour. Both are worth having in regular rotation.

But first, a little history, because lasagna has one, and it is more interesting than most people expect.

A Dish Older Than Italy

The word lasagna comes from the Greek word lasanon, which referred to a cooking pot, and the Romans borrowed it, repurposing it to describe the flat sheets of dough cooked in such a pot. The dish itself, in some form, has been around since at least the Middle Ages. The oldest known written recipe for what we would recognize as lasagna appears in a 14th-century English cookbook called The Forme of Cury, compiled by the cooks of King Richard II. That recipe called for layers of flat pasta sheets cooked with cheese and spices—no tomato, since tomatoes wouldn't arrive in European cooking for another two centuries.

Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, is the city most associated with lasagna as we know it today. The traditional Bolognese version uses a slow-cooked meat ragu, fresh egg pasta sheets, and bechamel sauce rather than ricotta, layered and baked until everything has merged into something greater than the sum of its parts. The Italian-American version, which is the one most recognizable in Moore County kitchens, substituted ricotta for the bechamel sometime in the mid-twentieth century, added mozzarella, and built the sauce around ground beef rather than the long-simmered ragu of the original. Neither is more correct than the other. They are simply two different dishes that happen to share a shape.

Lasagna arrived in American home kitchens in earnest after World War II, when returning soldiers who had spent time in Italy brought a taste for Italian food home with them. By the 1950s, it was appearing in church cookbooks and home economics columns across the South. By the 1970s, it was simply part of the American Sunday table, as familiar as pot roast and considerably easier to make ahead.

It remains one of the great make-ahead dishes in the home cook's collection, which is part of why it belongs in this column. Lasagna made on Saturday is better on Sunday. A pan made on Sunday is the best lunch of the whole following week. It is a dish that rewards planning, and a cook who plans is a cook who is always a little bit ahead.

Before You Start: A Few Things Worth Knowing

Lasagna has a reputation for being finicky, which is slightly unfair. It is layered, and layered things look complex from the outside. But the actual steps are straightforward, and a few details make the difference between a lasagna that holds together beautifully on the plate and one that slides apart into a soupy mess:

• Dry your noodles thoroughly before assembling. This is the single most important tip in this entire piece. Noodles that are wet from the pasta water will release that water into the dish during baking, and no amount of good cheese or good sauce recovers a watery lasagna. Cook the noodles, drain them, and lay them flat on a clean kitchen towel to dry completely before building.

• Pulse the meat sauce before using. Four cups of chunky meat sauce blended briefly in a food processor produces a smoother, more even layer that distributes better between the noodles and doesn't create gaps or thick spots in the final dish.

• Cover, then uncover. Starting covered with foil keeps the top from burning before the interior is fully heated through. Removing the foil for the last 20 to 25 minutes allows the top layer of cheese to brown and bubble, which is exactly what it should do.

• Rest before cutting. Twenty minutes feels like a long time when the lasagna is sitting there smelling like that. Do it anyway. The layers need that time to set up, and a lasagna cut too soon falls apart on the plate in a way that a rested lasagna does not.

• Make the sauce ahead. The meat sauce can be made in large batches and frozen, which means a lasagna can come together on a Sunday afternoon without the sauce adding hours to the project. A container of sauce thawed in the refrigerator overnight is forty minutes of work you've already done.

5-Cheese Meaty Lasagna

To save time, prepare the meat sauce ahead of time or use your favorite store-bought sauce instead. For best results, pulse 4 cups of the chunky meat sauce in a food processor before using.

Prep time: 20 minutes (plus 20 minutes to rest)
Cook time: 50 to 55 minutes
Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients
• 4 cups meat sauce
• 12 whole lasagna noodles, cooked according to package instructions and thoroughly dried
• 1 (24-ounce) container ricotta cheese
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4 tablespoons Italian seasoning, divided
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped, plus extra for garnish
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 (8-ounce) package shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
• 1 (8-ounce) package shredded Gruyere cheese, divided
• 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, divided
• 3/4 cup Asiago cheese, freshly grated, divided

Directions
Place the top oven rack in the center position and set the temperature to 375 degrees.

In a large glass bowl, combine ricotta cheese, beaten egg, 3 tablespoons Italian seasoning, and fresh parsley. Stir to combine.

Spray a 13 x 9-inch glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Add enough meat sauce to cover the bottom of the pan, then cover with 3 lasagna noodles. Top with an even layer of the ricotta cheese mixture, followed by a layer of shredded mozzarella and Gruyere cheese in equal amounts. Finish with a layer of grated Parmesan and Asiago cheese, also in equal amounts.
Repeat this process three more times: meat sauce, noodles, ricotta mixture, shredded cheeses, and grated cheeses. Sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of Italian seasoning across the final layer.

Loosely cover with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for another 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is golden brown and bubbling at the edges.
Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 20 minutes before slicing and serving. Garnish with fresh parsley if desired.

When You Want Lasagna Without the Pan

There are weeks when the oven doesn't get to run for an hour, and there are nights when what sounds good is lasagna, but what is practical is a pot of soup. Lasagna soup is the answer to both of those situations, and it is a dish that earns its own loyal following quickly once anyone tries it.

Every element that makes lasagna the classic dish it is shows up in the soup: the ground beef, the tomato, the cheese, the herbs. What changes is the form. Instead of a layered pan that needs an hour in the oven, it all goes into one pot, simmers together, and arrives in a bowl with the mozzarella stirred in at the end in melted, slightly stringy form that is very much the point. It is weeknight-practical and deeply satisfying in a way that surprises people who expect it to taste like a compromise. It doesn't.

Lasagna Soup

Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients
• 1 pound ground beef
• 5 cups beef broth
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 1/2 cups quartered fresh mushrooms
• 3/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 3/4 cup crumbled mozzarella cheese

Directions
In a large pot over medium heat, cook the ground beef until browned. Drain off the excess fat.

Add the beef broth, diced tomatoes, mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, garlic, basil, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the crumbled mozzarella and continue cooking for another 15 minutes, until the cheese has melted into the broth. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed before serving.

Serve with warm garlic bread or a piece of cornbread alongside. A little extra mozzarella crumbled over the top of each bowl doesn't hurt anything.

Worth Making Twice

The case for lasagna on a Moore County Sunday table is straightforward: it feeds a crowd, it gets better as it sits, it freezes well, and it is the kind of dish that makes people feel genuinely taken care of when it appears in front of them. It is also, once the meat sauce is already made, less work than it looks from the outside.

Make a big pan for company on Sunday. Pack the leftovers for lunch on Monday and Tuesday. Keep the soup recipe close for the week when time is short and the craving for something warm and filling arrives anyway. Both of them belong in a Moore County kitchen!