Why Restaurant Lasagna Tastes So Much Better

Lasagna. There are endless ways to make it. Every region builds it differently, every family swears by their recipe. This isn't the classic way, this is the chef way. A technique-driven approach to deeper flavour, lighter layers and a clean slice every time. Today I'm going to be making one of my favourite and one of the most popular pasta dishes in the world. We're going to be taking inspiration from a legendary three Michelin star chef to create the chef version of the ultimate lasagna. So the first thing we're going to be doing is starting with the sofrito. So we've made a sofrito a couple of times on this channel, effectively it's a mirepoix but an Italian version. So we're going to be using onion, we're going to be using some carrot and we're going to be using some celery. We are going to be cooking our sofrito in a very special ingredient which is a little bit unconventional but it's going to add bags of flavour. Probably the most modern versions of lasagna are coming from Bologna in northern Italy. So we're going to take our carrot, we're just going to cut a little slice at the bottom just to make so it stands flat and then we're going to cut into nice thin strips. Sort of famed as being the sort of wealthier north rather than the sort of the south which is they might use slightly more cheaper ingredients in the south whereas in the north it's a little bit more plentiful. It's where parmesan comes from, you know you've got fashion capitals like Milan and all sorts going on in the north. So just into like a fine julienne and then back across into a brunoise. So the whole point of cutting the vegetables like this is so that all the vegetables are the same size so they cook evenly. They're not so fine that you're still going to have a slight bite in the vegetables when you have when you have the finished ragu. There's no worse job than brunoising celery in a professional kitchen. So celery again into sort small strips and then again just into a nice fine brunoise. If you want your vegetables to have a slight bit more of a bite or a substance in the finished product you can go slightly chunkier that's fine. Then the last thing is to dice up our onion. So just going to go across the onion leaving the root attached. I'm just going to make it one slice across the middle before then just again cutting that into a nice fine dice. Our secret ingredient is going to be bone marrow. Again this is an optional addition but it's going to give our ragu buckets of flavour. But we're going to render that down with a tiny little bit of neutral oil and then once the bone marrow started to melt and the fat has rendered out we're then going to go in with our sofrita in there and then we're going to lightly sweat it down in the bone marrow fat. Once our bone marrow is slightly rendered out we can then start to go in with our vegetables and I really do think that the bone marrow adds that little meaty difference because lasagna is quite simple in its entirety. So adding little extras that are going to elevate it can really set this to set this apart and the reason why I think it's the ultimate. But if you can't get bone marrow you can easily go in with a bit of rendered beef fat if you've got that knocking around even goose fat, duck fat whatever if you've got over you might have something left in your fridge from doing roast potatoes or something like that. Any sort of fat is fine and equally if you only have olive oil it's still going to be delicious. I'm going to go in with a little pinch of salt as well it's just always good to be seasoning throughout the cooking process whenever you're making any sort of braise it really helps to bring out the flavours throughout the whole cooking process rather than just seasoning at the end where you just get a salty finish. We're just looking for our veg to go translucent if you get too much colour on this and start actually browning it you'll end up getting a slight bitter note from the vegetables where we're looking to just we're looking to just bring out the sweetness and the aromatics and the aromas from all these vegetables. We're going to get on to the next stage of our ragu which is the tomato element. So we found some incredible techniques from a famous Italian chef Massimo Bertora, three michelin star chef and what he uses in his ragu his ultimate ragu is he confys the tomatoes. We found that by roasting the tomatoes instead you get obviously it's much quicker and simpler than confying tomatoes in oil and also you get a much more rounded flavour and it's a little bit more achievable to do at home. So what we're going to do is we're going to cut the tomatoes in half, good generous salt and pepper with a good glug of olive oil over the top that this is going to be the only tomato element. The northern style is to keep it quite meat focused and let the ragu should be all about the meat and in some instances the tomato is barely even there. We're just going to roast these for about 15 to 20 minutes at 180 degrees so we're going to be using four different types of meat and this is really I think some of the key reasons why this this ragu is is so good. We're going to be using ox cheek, short rib, pancetta and then sausage meat or pork mince. We've taken a lot of the inspiration for this part of the ragu from Massimo Bertora. He did a version of this in his three michelin star restaurant in Modena called Osteria Francescana where he basically recreated a dish from his childhood and called it the crispy part of the lasagna where he basically deconstructed a lasagna and he did the ultimate pasta, the perfect ragu and then finished it with sauces and foams and very much in his style. So what we've done is taken inspiration from that ragu and applied some of it here so he in his version he uses ox cheek, ox tail and then he uses ox tongue as well. So we've subbed this out for short rib, cheek and we've gone in with the sausage meat and the bacon. The reason we've done this is because we think the fat content in the short rib really helps to break down and give a beautiful mouth feel and collagen effect in the finished ragu and also these are all ingredients that you should easily be able to get your hands on at home. Now he calls it the crispy part of lasagna because he feels that that is the ultimate part of what lasagna is. He's deconstructed it, we've reconstructed it purely for your enjoyment. That veg is looking and smelling incredible. There's no way that's going to be absolutely delicious. We're going to go into the pan with some more oil, a generous amount of oil here because we want to get a really good colour on our meat and then I'm going to lightly season our ox cheek and our short rib and that's what we're going to brown off first. We want a medium high heat on this so start it off nice and high and then you can lower the heat as it starts to colour more but as I said you want to be turning this regularly, really developing a beautiful crust and then while that's colouring up we can just slice up our pancetta. Yeah so right now we're running on a fairly low heat so whenever you're browning meat you want to start your pan nice and high and then as soon as you put the meat in you can then lower it down slightly. The reason you want to do that is because obviously your meat has a lot of water content in it so as soon as you hit the pan the first thing that you're going to get is you're going to get a loss of water. So if you have your pan on too low what your meat will end up doing is it'll end up boiling rather than frying so you want to evaporate that water as quickly as possible and then continue the caramelising process. So now we've got all our meat browned just going to remove the last little bit, a nice golden colour on there and set that meat aside. Then we're going to go in with our sausage meat and then our smoked pancetta. So again nice low heat to start with and then we're just going to keep it moving. We really want to break down that sausage meat so we don't get any large lumps of mince. When you're browning off this mince and the pancetta you want to be lifting off all that caramelisation off the bottom of the pan as much as you can at every stage. If you leave it too much without lifting off that caramelisation what it will continue to do is it'll just keep caramelising then you'll get a bitter note on the bottom of the pan. Look at that! How much nicer does that look than a tin of tomatoes eh? Which I think is actually one of the key reasons why this sauce is so bloody delicious. So we're going to go in with the roasted tomatoes into our trusty blender. We want all that nice oil as well. So what's happened here effectively is we've basically just confit these tomatoes in olive oil but just at a high heat so we've let some of that water content from the tomatoes escape and obviously the salt and the pepper is there seasoning the tomatoes as well and then we're just going to blend this very very quickly. We don't want to blend it smooth we're just going to effectively pulse it more than blend. We're going to pulse our tomatoes just a quick probably about five to ten seconds I would say. Sorry three seconds. So as you can see as it's as it's cooking here the meat starts to clump together again and I'm just taking our spatula and I'm just breaking up those clumps of meat. We don't want meatballs here. Again I'm just going to season this a tiny bit. Mince is browned give it the most important taste test flavour. Again slightly more unconventional we're going to add white wine instead of red. Now the reason I'm adding white wine is because it's obviously it's lighter it's a little bit sweeter and what it's going to do it's going to let the meat again kind of shine through a little bit a little bit more clearer. It's going to give us a bit of a lighter sauce and the acidity is going to really help to balance the ragu. Scraping the bottom of the pan nice and hard to release all that flavour from the bottom of the pan and then we're going to keep it on a medium high heat and just reduce that down by half. Wine's almost reduced and then we're going to add back in our lovely sofrito with the bone marrow fat in there. Turn the heat down slightly. Browned off ox cheek and short rib goes in as well. Tomato pulp is going to go in and it might look very orange at the moment but that's because you blended it while it's hot. It's just because of the air in there but obviously as that cooks out over time it's going to go beautiful and dark so don't be worried. A sprig of rosemary, sprig of bay leaf, some parmesan rind. Now this parmesan rind is going to do wonders for this ragu but it's effectively you're not really going to taste parmesan but what it's going to do is it's going to add roundness it's going to add fullness to the sauce and it's going to add that natural umami hit that everyone knows and loves. Another little sprinkling of salt, very much in a similar fashion to the reason why we're using the white wine. We want this ragu to be a little bit lighter and not overpowering so we're just going to go with a light chicken stock which once it's reduced and simmered with all this beef it's still going to be lovely and meaty but it's going to give us a much cleaner lighter sort of ragu rather than a rich heavy one that you get when you use red wine and beef stock. So we just want to cover the meat and then we're going to bring this to a simmer. Once it comes up to the boil we're then going to transfer it to an oven. We're going to cover it with our trusty cartouche, perfect for something like this. You want some of the steam to evaporate but you want to keep it nice and sort of moist without getting a skin on it. This is perfect for this sort of thing. You can do this lower if you want to put it in overnight or while you're going out for a long walk or something you could easily put it on 100 or 120 degrees centigrade and then leave it in there for six to eight hours or equally you could whack it up to probably 160 and it might get done a little bit quicker. I wouldn't go much higher than sort of 160 but we're going to meet in the middle and go around 140 and I think it should take us around about two hours. So lid on and then into the oven. Okay ragu's in the oven now we're moving on to the pasta. So we're going to be making spinach pasta or green pasta. So we're going to start off with spinach and we're going to blanch this in boiling water for about a minute and then once it's boiled we're going to take it out of the boiling water and place it into some ice water to chill down. It's going to add a really nice irony flavour to the pasta dough which is also which is going to complement the meat the meatiness of the of the of the dish. Obviously it goes without saying fully aware that a lot of people making this lasagna are going to buy in pasta and that's absolutely fine. I think you can actually even buy green lasagna sheets now. This recipe will work perfectly fine with dried pasta sheets, fresh pasta sheets, green, pink, purple, whatever you want. Remove it from the water, squeeze it out all the all the water. The next step we're going to do is I'm just going to very roughly chop the spinach. This is just going to help to blend it smoother and then we're going to blend that with some egg yolk. So this is double zero flour as always when you're making pasta. Then we're going to make a small well in the centre and we're going to go in with two whole eggs, a generous glug of olive oil, a little pinch of salt, our spinach mixture. So we're then just going to take, using our hand, we're just going to very quickly bring this together into a dough and then knead it for a couple of minutes before wrapping it in cling film, placing in the fridge for about half an hour to set. It wouldn't be lasagna without white sauce. So just going to fly through this, you've all seen us make white sauce a million times. Taken some milk and we've infused this with some bay leaf, some peppercorn and some thyme. Placed it into the milk, brought it up to 80 degrees and just infused that for an hour. Passed it off and then that's our milk ready to go. You can also just use completely plain milk, absolutely fine. Okay so our butter's melted and should go with our flour. Then on a low heat we're just going to cook out the flour. Once this almost has like a wet sand consistency, almost like biscuity appeal, then that'll be ready to then add our milk. Bit by bit to try and achieve nice smooth consistency, almost creating like a smooth paste each time and then that paste over time will get more and more diluted into a nice smooth sauce. So we've added all our milk to our bechamel, cooked that out for about five minutes. Our bechamel is nice and thick now. Now we're just going to add our parmesan and then just let that melt into the sauce. Just give it a little mix to combine. Final bit of seasoning, it's just a touch of nutmeg. It's not going to overpower anything too much, it's just going to give a little background not heat but just a little bit of attitude. You know something's going on in there. Now it's ready to roll. The reverse cartouche, made famous by my compadre Will Murray. Place it on top of your cooling down product to avoid the skin. Look at that, reverse cartouche. Have you ever seen anything so sexy? World exclusive. Now we're going to start to roll our pasta dough. Just pass it down nicely so it's a bit thinner. I'm going to put it through the widest setting first. So we're just going to keep rolling it through. We've taken this to setting number six of eight which I think will be about right. Okay so that's about the right thickness. So we're going to hold it up. I put that through probably about 15 times. As you can see you can sort of just sort of see the light coming through. I don't want it like crazy crazy thin because you still want the pasta to have a nice structure to it. So I'm just going to set these aside and then we're going to blanch them. The pasta is going to we're going to keep dropping it in for a minute each. Refresh it in ice water. It's firmed up a little bit now and then we're just going to gently lay it out onto some cloth just to dry. So our ragu has been in the oven now best part of two hours and a half. I've stirred it sort of every half an hour as it's been cooking and now we can pick out that parmesan rind. It's sort of like shriveled up and you want to let it cool slightly but you can see the sort of fat has risen to the top, the residual fat and what we're looking to do now is just break up those chunks of meat. So we diced it quite small already but as you can see you've got little chunks of meat here. We're just almost going to push them against the side of the pan just to break up the chunks of meat. Now if you leave your meat too big you'll end up with like really stringy sort of like pulled pork consistency. Because we've diced it up already the meat's already quite a good size so we're just looking now to break those chunks up but we don't want it to be like mush because we still want to have those like a nice bite in the lasagna. But as you kind of, it will naturally happen as you mix it anyway. As you can see you find a chunk of meat just press it against the side there and you can see all that cartilage inside the cheek there but all that's going to add a really beautiful mouthfeel to the finished lasagna. We've made a gastrique which you would have seen us make before which is basically sugar and vinegar which you just boil together and it adds a beautiful sweet acidity which you can use to add balance to your finished ragu. Pretty much ready to go now. Obviously as I'm seasoning and mixing it's cooling down slightly just so it's a bit more manageable to plate up. So now it's time to build our lasagna. So we've got the ragu, we've got the blanched pasta and then we've got our white sauce from earlier which I've just given a little bit of heat. We're going to start with a little bit touch of the white sauce. So we're going sort of in the style of lots of small layers, lots of thin layers of everything to add a really nice structure to the finished lasagna. Layer of the ragu. Now if it's not 100% even that's okay. I'm going to go in with the pasta and then you can sort of cut bits off and change it as you're going through it. That's the beauty of using this fresh pasta is that you can sort of trim it and manipulate it in any way you need to to fit the perfect sizes that you want. That's our first layer done. I'm basically just going to keep repeating that. The thinner layers are going to give us more structural integrity on the finished lasagna so we can really cut it out and serve it as almost like a lovely slice. There's a real nice point of difference here that it's not just like one texture of just the sort of minced beef traditionally or minced pork. We've got a real, we've got a little bit of cartilage from the ox cheek, you've got that beautiful fatty flavour from the short rib and then you've still got the bacon, the pork in there as well. So it's a real, real beautiful mix of different meats. I'll be hopefully trying to get anywhere between eight to ten layers from here I reckon. So pasta, last layer of pasta has gone on. Next we're going to top it with the last bit of cheese. You could usually do this the night before, you could do this a day before, you could do this two days before. You can pop it in your fridge like this and it's just ready to bake whenever you want or you can pretty much just cheese it straight away and bake it. Last step now we're going to set an oven to 140. Now we're just going to grate some parmesan all over the top. This is going to help to achieve that crunchy crispy layer that Massimo Vittoria was so affectionate about. So we're going to take, this is going to take about 20 to 30 minutes in a medium oven at 140 and then we're going to finish it slightly unconventionally which is going to give us that beautiful crispy top that we're really after. Okay into the oven she goes. Oh imagine if it went. Okay so lasagna's been in now for about 25 minutes, it's soaked up all the sauce, the pasta's cooked nicely, starting to get a little bit of a crust on the outside. So what we're going to do now is we're going to remove it from the oven and we're going to place it under a preheated grill. What we're trying to do here is caramelise the top, caramelise that cheese and basically get that top layer of pasta to go slightly crispy. So if you don't have a grill at home, you can do this in a super hot oven. I'd actually take the lasagna out, turn up your oven 220, 230, preheat it and then pop your lasagna back in and hopefully you'll try and get a similar effect. Oh yeah now we're looking, now we're talking. Oh okay so we've got our lasagna down from the grill. As you can see we've really pushed the crispy part of that lasagna. We're really trying to replicate that bit that Massimo Vittoria loved. This may be one of the greatest feats of human accomplishments but look at that, the lasagna in all its glory, the chef's lasagna. I for one cannot wait to dig into this but look at it, like I love that, like how you can just cut through it. It's not too saucy, oh look at that. I love how like you get the flex of meat, you've got the cheek in there, you've got the oh and like the top almost, you get like almost like a crust from all that layer of cheese on the top. God I'm so excited. I always think that's one thing I don't like about lasagnas is when they're really tomatoey. This is sort of a really perfect blend where you just get the sweetness and the acidity from the tomato but you don't get all that watery mess that you get with a with like a like a sauerbrat or a cheap lasagna. So much flavour in there, you can still get all these distinctive layers even after being cut into. This might be the best lasagna on planet earth.