Lasagna

Made as a slow-cooked dish with homemade lasagna sheets, béchamel sauce, and a sauce with a soffritto base.

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Recipe for lasagna

If you want to make a lasagna in under 1 hour, forget this recipe and find another one. Here, attention has been paid to every detail, and no shortcuts have been taken anywhere.

The meat is freshly minced from 30-day dry-aged beef chuck, the meat sauce is made as a simmer dish with a soffritto base, the béchamel sauce is made from scratch, and of course, homemade lasagna sheets are used.

The dish is a simmer dish, so it takes a long time to make, but the taste is (undoubtedly) worth the wait. One of the things to keep in mind with simmer dishes is that although they take a long time to make, it usually doesn’t mean you spend a long time in the kitchen.

The dish is made to serve 8 people. You can, of course, make a smaller portion, but since you’re already at it, it doesn’t take much longer to make a larger portion. Since lasagna freezes very well, you can easily pack a few portions in the freezer.

If you don’t feel like making everything from scratch, you can, for example, use lasagna sheets from the supermarket – your lasagna will probably need about 10 more minutes in the oven.

Servings: 8 people

Lasagna

Made as a slow-cooked dish with homemade lasagna sheets, béchamel sauce, and a sauce with a soffritto base.

Author: Per Asmussen

Course: Dinner

Cuisine: Italian

Keyword: beef, Dinner, Everyday Food, Food For Guests, ground beef, Italy, lasagna, Pasta, simmered

Prep Time: 2 hours hours

Cook Time: 20 minutes minutes

Metric - US Customary

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Ingredients

Soffritto

• 150 gram Carrots
• 150 gram Celery Leaf
• 150 gram Onion
• 150 gram Bacon It can be omitted and replaced with 2 tbsp. of olive oil

Tomato Sauce

• 300 gram White Wine
• 700 gram Passata Or 2 cans of chopped/peeled tomatoes
• 300 gram stock Or broth. You decide whether it's vegetable or beef.

Meat

• 600 gram Ground Beef

Bolognese

• Sugar
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Lemon Juice
• Salt
• Pepper From the grinder
• 100 gram Cream

Bechame Sauce

• 50 gram Butter
• 65 gram Wheat Flour
• 1 l Whole Milk
• 100 gram Cream
• Spices Salt, pepper from the grinder, and grated nutmeg

Lasagna Sheets

• 400 gram Tipo 00 Flour
• 4 pcs. Egg Yolk
• 100 gram Grated cheese Mozzarella

Instructions

Soffritto

• Rinse all the vegetables and peel them.
• Cut them into smaller pieces.
• Place your bacon in a sauté pan and fry it over medium-high heat.
• After a few minutes, it will release quite a bit of fat.
• You will use this to fry the vegetables in.
• Put them in the pan and fry them for a few minutes.

Tomato sauce

• Add white wine to your soffritto mixture and let it slowly evaporate.
• Add broth and the tomatoes from the can. I usually use passata, but you can easily use peeled/chopped tomatoes.
• Let it all simmer for 40 minutes over low heat.
• Depending on the consistency you want in your lasagna, you can choose to blend it or not. I typically do, as my children aren't too fond of biting into celery.

Meat

• It's important that the meat you use isn't too low in fat. I typically use 8-12%, so I don't need any fat to fry it in.
• The way I fry meat for a lasagna or bolognese is as follows:
• I put the meat in a dry, heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat.
• I constantly use a wooden spoon to chop the meat into smaller pieces, so it becomes as fine as possible.
• While the meat fries, it releases both juices and liquid and starts to boil a bit. Here, it's just a matter of patience and continuing to fry the meat until the liquid evaporates.
• The meat ends up crackling quite a bit, as there's no more liquid left.
• The entire process typically takes between 30-45 minutes.

Meat sauce

• Mix the meat with the tomato sauce and let it come to a slight boil.
• After that, it needs to be seasoned.
• Typically, this is done by adding a few drops of lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and a pinch of sugar. Since the dish hasn't been salted yet, it's hard to season it properly.
• Therefore, give it a good shot of pepper from the grinder and quite a bit of salt.
• Pour the cream into the sauce and let it simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
• The meat sauce is now ready for use.

Béchamel sauce

• Preferably use a large, heavy-bottomed pot for this sauce.
• It's made with more than 1 liter of milk, so there needs to be enough space to whisk it well.
• Set it to medium-high heat and melt the butter. Add the flour - preferably a bit at a time while whisking vigorously. The goal is to avoid lumps.
• Add 1-2 dl of milk at a time, still stirring vigorously.
• Turn down to medium heat and continue until you've used all the milk.
• Then add the cream and let it simmer for 5 minutes.
• Season with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

Lasagna sheets

• Pour flour into a large bowl and make a small well in the center where you place the eggs.
• Gradually stir the dough (preferably with your hands) from the center outwards.
• The dough will gradually come together and become fine and uniform.
• Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for one hour.
• Divide the dough into 10 equal pieces and roll them out one at a time. The rest of the dough should remain covered with the plastic wrap.
• If you don't have a pasta machine, you can definitely roll the dough with a rolling pin - that's what we usually do.
• Roll them as thin as possible, you should almost be able to see through them. Sprinkle well with flour over them and cut them into squares. This way, you have the advantage of cutting them to fit your dish.
• Take out a tea towel and sprinkle it with flour. Place your lasagna sheet on it and sprinkle flour over it. This prevents them from sticking together.
• Continue this way until all the sheets are rolled out.

Lasagna

• All the ingredients now need to be assembled.
• Pour about 1 ladle of béchamel sauce into the bottom of your dish and spread it, for example, with a spatula.
• Then about 3 ladles of meat sauce over it and spread it, for example, with a spatula.
• Cover it all with lasagna sheets and repeat the process until you run out of everything.
• I like to have a lot of béchamel sauce on top, so I'm generally pretty stingy with it through the layers, to then put a relatively thick layer on top.
• Finally, I sprinkle grated cheese over it and give it about 20 minutes in the oven at 190 degrees Celsius (374 degrees Fahrenheit) fan.
• All the ingredients (except the lasagna sheets - but they only need a couple of minutes of cooking time) are cooked, so it's primarily about getting the cheese on top golden.
• Let your lasagna stand for 5-10 minutes to set before you bite into it.
• Serve with a salad and a good piece of bread.

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Notes

Lasagna tastes great the next day or after a trip to the freezer. It becomes a bit firmer in consistency, but that doesn't hurt at all:

Also check out our YouTube video of the delicious recipe here.