Skillet Lasagna Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the best pan to make lasagna in? ›

Too much between one layer and another will keep you from ever getting a perfect slice. Too little and all you'll taste is pasta. Do not put large pieces of vegetables or meat in lasagna for the same reason as above. To get a perfect lasagna, the filling should be finely sliced or even creamy.

For a lasagna that looks amazing and tastes great, it's important to skip the metal pan and go straight for the glass bakeware. Glass baking pans obviously don't contain aluminum, so you can layer your sauce, noodles, and cheese without worrying about losing flavor to a chemical reaction.

Glass and Metal React to Ingredients Differently

Acidic ingredients like tomatoes and citrus can react with aluminum (the most common metal used in bakeware), creating a metallic taste in your food. This is why lasagna and other casseroles with acidic ingredients are often baked in glass.

Some acidic bakes (like fruit cobblers) and lasagna or casserole (containing tomatoes, citrus, or other acidic fruit) may bake best in a glass dish, to prevent the metal from reacting to the acidic ingredients.

Milk. It tenderises the meat, to leave you with the most tender ragù.

Then repeat the layers. Top the last layer of your lasagna with sauce and cheese. You can also alternate layers of sauce and ricotta cheese. Most lasagna recipes have two to three layers.

So, to achieve the perfect lasagna, the consistency of the sauce is absolutely essential. Both the ragù and béchamel sauce should be dense and creamy. Avoid sauces that are too liquid and slide to the bottom of the dish. A thicker consistency of the sauce will allow the pasta to be flavoured in the best possible way.

Lasagna is the kind of food that can keep a family fed for many nights in a row, happily. But it has other perks, too: namely, that you can prepare the whole thing in advance, and store it in the fridge overnight—ready to pop in the oven an hour or so before dinner (just before the kids start to whine).

But boiling them first, even just submerging them in hot water for 5 minutes prior to lasagna assembly changes the texture of the noodle. It plumps it up. Unboiled noodles, while tender, are not as plump. Just gives it a slightly different texture.

Can you soak regular lasagna noodles instead of boiling? ›

Soak—Instead of Boil—Lasagna Noodles

And since they're soaked, they'll cook faster in the oven than if you used noodles that were completely dry," writes Prakash. "Plus, the soaking doesn't add any more time to the recipe because it's done while the sauce simmers."

Glass pans are good for casseroles like lasagna because once glass heats up, it stays warm longer.

Cover the Pyrex Deep with tinfoil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove tinfoil and cook the lasagna for another 5 minutes or until the top is golden and bubbly. Cool slightly and serve while warm. Lasts for 3-4 days in the refrigerator and can be cut and frozen for up to 90 days.

It may sound surprising, but you shouldn't cover a casserole dish with foil directly when baking, as it can impact the final dish. "Acidic foods like tomato sauce [in lasagna] will react adversely when exposed to foil under the heat of the oven," says Brian Owenby, chef at the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

You can use any size baking dish for your lasagna, but a 13”x9” pan works nicely. Whatever size pan you choose, make sure it has sides that can handle the lasagna's layers—two-inch tall sides generally work well.

As a general rule of thumb, one 13x9 pan will yield 8 medium-sized portions. You can adjust the serving sizes to your family's appetite: if they have larger appetites, you cut the pan into 6 large portions, and if they have smaller appetites, you can cut the pan into 10 smaller portions.

A typical lasagna pan measures 9 x 13 inches and is between 2 to 3 inches in depth. Many chefs agree that lasagna should have at least three layers of meat. cheese, and sauce. For restaurant-style lasagna, you can go even higher than that, provided that your pan is deep enough.