Lasagne. A Step-by-Step Guide

It’s impossible for me thinking on Lasagne without thinking on my mother, my children's granny alias nonna Teresa, and the big effort she used to put in it almost every Sunday. Those were times where the lasagne pasta sheets had to be boiled first and laid to dry from the excess of water on a clean table cloth, one by one perfectly set down horizontally, occupying the whole table, making nonna Teresa been extremely busy with dipping and draining the pasta sheets in and out of the large pot of boiling water and, at a coordinated time, laying the ready-to-go ones carefully into the baking dish with all the other ingredients: sauces, cheeses, herbs and so on. Today, we are lucky, we don’t need all that kerfuffle as the dry lasagne pasta sheets can go straight to the baking pot without being boiled first. You could make fresh pasta sheets, if you really wanted to, and that would change everything. For now we keep following this simplest yet laborious recipe and the mothers like me will keep on filling all those school fair events with this delicious lasagne for the wealth and health of the schools.

Lasagne aka baked pasta

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Good to know

There are 2 main sauces for making lasagne alla bolognese, which both require time and attention to detail: besciamella and ragù.

Remember that the best ingredients you can find in the market, the best results you will get.

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Ingredients 8 servings

For the ragù sauce, follow the recipe Spaghetti with ragù.

You will need to prepare for serving 8, therefore double the amount of the ingredients in the recipe.

Besciamella sauce for 8 Servings

1. Butter, 100 g

2. Plain flower, 100g

3. Milk, 1l

4. Nutmeg (optional), grated, 0.5 tsp

5. Salt and pepper

Other ingredients

1. Pasta for lasagne, fresh or dry, 20-24 Sheets

2. Parmesan, grated, 200 g

3. Mozzarella, cut in cubes 1cm, 200g
   

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Let's jump to the method

1. First get ready the Ragù sauce for 8 servings and put apart (as in recipe for Spaghetti or tagliatelle al ragù).

1. While the ragù is cooking, start preparing the Besciamella sauce. In a medium size pan, melt 100g of butter. Once the butter is done, lower the heat, add a bit of the 100g of flour and stir with a whisker. Keep on adding the flour slowly and stir until all the flour is added. It should look like having no lumps but smooth. Then, add the milk to it, little by little while keeping on stirring until the milk is completely added. Add the grated nutmeg, salt and pepper.

2. Let it cook at a very low heat and stir often. In 15-20 minutes approx. the sauce is ready. It should be creamy and not lumpy.

1. Now that the sauces are ready, let’s start preparing the actual lasagne. Put all ingredients close to the working space, in the order that you are going to use them to simplify your work: pasta sheets, besciamella, ragù, parmesan, mozzarella, salt, pepper.

2. Switch on the oven at 180º C.

3. In a baking dish for lasagne (28cm x 18 cm approx.), start adding a layer of besciamella covering the bottom of the baking dish.

4. Next, add the pasta sheets covering the full baking dish. If you are using dried pasta, you can break it to the size you wish to fit perfecly in the baking dish.

5. On top of the pasta, lay enough besciamella to cover the whole pasta.

6. Then add on top of the besciamella 2 ladles of ragù and spread all over.

7. Sprinkle with parmesan and spread some of the mozzarella cubes. Add little salt and pepper.

8. Repeat from point 4 until the ingredients finish. Make sure you manage well the quantity of the ingredients to last to the end for all layers. More or less, you should make 4-6 layers.

9. Finish with a besciamella layer, sprinkle some parmesan on top and drop few knobs of butter.

10. Cook in the middle of the oven at 180°C for about 30-40 minutes until a nice crust is formed.

11. Let it rest for 15 minutes.

12. Serve and Buon Appetito!

Lasagne