Lasagna with Ricotta or Cottage Cheese?
Growing up, cottage cheese and lasagna were a constant in my diet. Because I didn’t like the texture of ricotta, my mother would always substitute cottage cheese in lasagna.
These days I’m more tolerant of ricotta in lasagna. In this recipe, you can use ricotta or cottage cheese. Use the same amount for either cheese you choose. You can even mix cottage cheese and ricotta cheese together. Both are delicious, but ricotta is more authentic.
The majority of the basic ingredients for this lasagna are pantry staples.
A few notes:
- Ground beef and Italian sausage. A combination of these two meats give the best flavor. If you’d like, you can use our homemade Italian sausage seasoning to season ground pork.
- Spaghetti sauce. This tastes great with a premade spaghetti sauce or a store-bought sauce like Rao’s marinara.
- Lasagna noodles. We don’t specifically use oven-ready lasagna noodles. If you follow our instructions, you can use regular lasagna noodles and they should cook just fine.
✨ See the recipe cardfor the full ingredient list. ✨
How to Make No-Boil Classic Lasagna
- Brown the meat with mirepoix and spices.
- Stir together tomato sauce and diced tomatoes.
- Regular lasagna noodles should be layered and assembled with sauce, beef, ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan.
- Bake the lasagna covered for 60 minutes.
- When the cheese is melted and browned, uncover, sprinkle with more, and bake.
- Let sit for 5 minutes and then slice and serve!
Why We Love It
This classic lasagna recipe is SO adaptable. Short on time? No problem, this is a no-boil recipe using jarred tomato sauce that tastes great with frozen mirepoix or none at all. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, make your own tomato sauce and dice some fresh mirepoix. Invest in some fresh mozzarella and tear chunks for the topping for the real deal.
Whichever way you go, this lasagna, with its heaping tomato-y beef/sausage layer and lots of cheesy string pulls, has all the makings of a classic comfort food dish.
