Classic Lasagna

Everyone should make lasagna at least one time in their life, and if you do, I guarantee it will be the best lasagna you ever tasted. As if lasagna wasn't already difficult enough, I'm going to start by making my pasta sheets from scratch as well. To my flour, I'll add my eggs, then I'll whisk my eggs with a fork until they're fully combined. Once the eggs are fully combined, I'll start pulling in my flour from the outside of the well. But just remember, you don't have to make your pasta fresh for lasagna. I tend to make mine fresh because I think it gives more of a melt-in-your-mouth texture, but the lasagna is going to be good either way. My favorite tool for making fresh pasta is a bench scraper. It's quick, easy to use, versatile, and keeps your work surface nice and clean. If you're using the Italian grandma method like I am here, you eventually have to get in there with your hands. Just accept the messiness. Pull the dough together, gather up every last little crumb, and knead your pasta dough until it becomes nice and smooth. Oh man, this is a workout. I'm sweating. After a quick rest at room temperature, I'll cut it into four portions, and then prepare it for the pasta sheeter by quickly rolling it out. Now I'll flour up my machine and my sheet of pasta and roll. I'll roll all our pasta out into nice long sheets, and then the only thing left will be to cut it. Part of the reason I like making fresh pasta for lasagna, aside from the actual difference in texture that you get, is just the fact that making fresh pasta is such a fun and beautiful process. I enjoy doing it, but it does make a mess of your kitchen and it's not absolutely necessary for a delicious lasagna. Once you're done making your pasta, take the dish that you'll be baking your lasagna in, and you can use it to measure out how long your pasta needs to be. I'll actually just take my knife right in here and carefully trace each sheet of pasta. It's okay if they're not all perfect, because I promise you the lasagna is going to be just fine either way. You'll want to make sure you have enough pasta to make four layers when you go to put together your lasagna. So there's one layer, then two layers, then three layers, and four. Nailed it. Now we'll take a baking sheet, cover it with a of parchment, add down one of the layers, then cover with another sheet of parchment, another one of the layers, and repeat until you've stacked all your pasta. This will just make sure nothing sticks together. Cover this all up with plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out, and then set this to the side. Let's move on to making our sauce. For the meat, we'll use a combination of hot Italian sausage and sweet Italian sausage. We don't want the casing from the outside of the sausages, so I'll split them all open with a knife and then pull out all of that meat. The only other things I need to prep are these fennel seeds, which I'll simply chop up and crush, as well as my onion. Chop your onion into nice fine bits. Then we'll also need five cloves of garlic, very finely minced. As always, I'm going to use my classic garlic trick. Garlic is my least favorite thing to cut in the kitchen. Your hands smell like garlic for like three days. All our ingredients are prepped. Let's move over to the stove. Heat on, medium to medium-high. Start with a nice layer of olive oil into the bottom of your pot. More fat will come from the sausage, so we don't need too much. Then once the oil is hot, add in all of your Italian sausage. Spread it out quickly, but then it is very important that you leave it where it is for a few minutes. Just like searing a steak, we want to develop a crust, and once you feel like it'll have that nice golden crust, flip it all around and start to break it up into smaller chunks. Don't be afraid to crank the heat all the way to high during this portion to get that nice crust. That right there is what I'm going for. Now grab your onion, put that right over all the sausage. Anytime I add onions, I hit them with a quick sprinkle of salt, and now we just want to let these soften for a couple minutes. The color on the sausage is exactly where I want it. That's gorgeous. You could actually follow this recipe, and even if you're getting it like 50% right, people are going to think you know how to cook. I think. Once your onion has softened, go ahead and add the garlic, a few red pepper flakes, then some fresh cracked black pepper, and our crushed fennel. Now let this go for a couple minutes, continuing to break up your meat as you stir. If you think about it, you don't want these big clumps in your lasagna. You want it to be nice and fine. A whole lasagna should sort of melt all together. I'm not making a hamburger. And really make sure to get in there and scrape all those crispy bits off the bottom of your pot, because we all know that's where the real flavor is. Now don't look at me crazy when I say this, but we are now going to put an entire tube of tomato paste into our sauce. Tomato is packed with tons and tons of that umami flavor, so adding all this tomato paste to your lasagna will just give it that much more flavor. We want to toast off all of that tomato paste. Similar to making brown butter, this is an important step that develops flavor. Once that tomato paste turns a deep red, almost lighter brown, we'll add in some whole tomatoes, which I am then going to stand back from as I crush, because otherwise you will get hit right in the face with tomato juice. Once we add that liquid, do another scrape of the bottom of the pot. Any water or liquid is always going to help to knock all those crispy bits loose. As a final step, I'll throw in a bunch of basil leaves, which will add all of their amazing flavor as this continues to cook. And we'll let this cook uncovered for about an hour while we prep the rest of our lasagna ingredients. While our sauce cooks, there's only two more things we need to do. The first being making our ricotta filling. Some people just use normal ricotta. They don't do anything to it, but it's lots better if you just add a few small things to it. The first being a bit of parmesan cheese. That also gives you some salt content. Then a few cloves of garlic, which I am literally just going to microplane right into the bowl. Then some fresh cracked black pepper, a nice pinch of salt. Depending on the day, I even sometimes add a little bit of fresh nutmeg. But before we add our last ingredient, the eggs, I'm going to stir it up now so I can taste it without the raw egg in there. Based on the taste, this needs a little more salt. I do like it extra salty. It doesn't actually taste extra salty once it's in the lasagna. And now we can crack in both eggs. Just give this a good mix until fully combined. And now just one last thing to do. Grating this whole block of mozzarella cheese. Notice that I'm grating it the long way, such that I get the longest strands of cheese possible. Transfer that to a bowl and we can assemble. The layering process is fun because you have to get down a bit of a pattern, but once you get into the rhythm, it's easy. The order for layering will be the same throughout the whole process. We'll start with a thin layer of red sauce all across the bottom to prevent the pasta from sticking or burning. And notice that I'm really pushing this sauce all the way to the edges. A common mistake people make is layering too much in the center and not enough on the sides. And then your lasagna might be a little lopsided. Next, after I get off any of that excess flour, I'll place down two of my pasta sheets. Feel free to trim them a little extra if needed. And press those firmly down in the bottom. Next, do a nice even layer of your ricotta cheese. Oftentimes it can be really helpful to spread it out using an offset spatula. That'll help you get it nice and even. And for our last layer, a light coating of mozzarella and a quick dusting of parmesan cheese. And then we just repeat. Sauce, then pasta sheets, then ricotta filling, and then both of our shredded cheeses. As I'm making this lasagna, one thing I'm being very, very careful of is keeping everything extremely nice and level. That way, as I build it all the way up, I know that structurally, it's going to hold together really well. Go like that once in a while too and just make sure everything is nice and flat. This is a construction site. You gotta get in there perfectly flat. Sometimes your pasta sheets might not fit perfectly if you're using end pieces, if you made it homemade. So what you can do is you can sometimes stretch things out just a little bit. But you can also cut, kind of just piece things together using some of the scraps like a jigsaw puzzle. And that'll work for this layer. When I first made lasagna as a kid, I probably just layered everything however I felt like it. But this order that we're doing is technically the correct way to spread. It's a little tricky to explain why, but if you don't trust me, trust the Italian grandmas who've been doing it forever. Okay, last one. Once you've placed down your final layer of pasta, add some streaks of red sauce. Also make sure to tuck it towards the edges to get that really nice caramelization there too. On the top of a lasagna, I do think that the messier it looks, the better it tends to turn out in flavor. Notice how I'm not being that careful anymore. This is all going to melt together however it wants anyways. So I kind of like the top of my lasagna to look like a modern painting before it goes into the oven. And then cover all that with a thick layer of mozzarella. I saved about half of all my mozzarella just to put on the top. I'm even happy having some of it And last, a good coating of parmesan cheese, especially all along the edges so it gets nice and crispy. Get a sheet tray, put your lasagna over the sheet tray. Things are going to spill and goop over the side. And finally, into the oven. Just looking in the oven, the reason I can tell this is going to be a good lasagna is because of all those layers. Every layer is packed with flavor, and as it bakes, you'll slowly see all those layers mixed together. And when it's finally golden brown on the top, we can pull it out. I never put on oven mitts. When I put these on and I look like a lobster, I'm not messing around. Seriously, no, I'm not joking about this. That's very exciting. Listen to the bubbles. We've got these crispy, laced edges of parmesan cheese, beautiful, melty, bubbly, crackly mozzarella over the top, and then lots and lots of layers of gooey lasagna goodness. How could you not love this food? Most people now would put this on a plate. I'm not most people.