Lasagna – Warm, Comforting, and Delicious!

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Welcome to the 2nd installment of the Ultimate Comfort Food Series here at The Simple Life of a Complex Pastor’s Wife! If you’re looking for a delicious lasagna recipe, you’ve found it! (Want to see the other three installments? Check out Taco Pizza As a Comfort Food?, Creamy Homemade Mac and Cheese and Easy Chicken Pot Pie)

Ohhh, lasagna… Hot and noodle-y and meaty and saucy… And when served with garlic bread, it’s just the right dinner for a cold night.

A perfect, warm, comforting recipe for a icy, rainy, icky day like today.

There are SO many different recipes out there for lasagna. Before I met Eric, I used to make a meatless version for my mom and me. But Eric insists on meat in his lasagna so we went several years without lasagna at all. Until my stepmom told me about her recipe. She uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta, and doesn’t use onion. Which was an immediate winner for me. Onion and I do NOT get along well…

Naturally, I immediately searched for recipes like this online. They’re all different! It’s crazy how one food can have 1,384 recipes, isn’t it?

So I chose a few, read the comments and reviews, and created my own delicious lasagna recipe. It’s so good!! I could eat the cheese mixture by itself (minus the raw egg, of course…)

Since it’s just been Eric and me (until last year), and we can never eat a full 9×13 pan of lasagna, I usually make three 8×8 pans and freeze 2 of them.

And they freeze beautifully! I made this as a freezer meal the day we got the word that Judah was impatient and coming 4 weeks early. So when we got home from Florida, we had three trays of lasagna ready and waiting for us to thaw and bake.

Which means of course, that this is also a good recipe to take to a family with a new baby. A delicious and easy meal for them so they don’t have to worry about planning out a whole meal while tending to their new little blessing.

I don’t have any measurements for the 8×8 pans so if you’re going to split it into three pans like I do, just kind of eyeball it so that you’re using just enough sauce to cover the cheese mixture but not saturating it or you may not have enough. The noodles also will be too long for the pan so I just break off a bit from each one to make them fit.

Those pans also tend to be a bit less shallow than a regular 9×13 pan so your lasagna will come right to the top.

I bake my smaller pans for 45 minutes. I would recommend covering with foil and baking for 25-30 minutes, then uncovering for the last 15-20 minutes. You could also just not cover it at all and keep an eye on it. If it looks like it’s getting too browned on top, you could cover with aluminum foil until the end of the cooking time. You want the cheese to melt, but not burn..

To freeze, once you’ve topped your unbaked lasagna with cheese, cover it with plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Wrap them up really well so they don’t get freezer burn or leak all over your freezer before they’re frozen solid. And make sure to either put a label on it somewhere or do what I do and grab a Sharpie to label your lasagna. I write “Lasagna” obviously, the date I froze it, and the baking instructions. Otherwise, I’ll forget and will have to search for my recipe.

And I’m sure this is obvious, but make sure to take the plastic wrap covering off before you bake your lasagna. Otherwise, you’ll have a huge disgusting, melty mess in your oven and a very sad wasted meal.

If you make this, I’d love to hear how it turns out! Leave a comment below and let me know!