An Easy Weeknight Meal.
This Lazy Lasagna recipe is an emotional support meal for the busy or lazy cook. If your family is anything like ours, weeknights, and all nights, can be a pretty crazy whirlwind of noisy chaos. Skipping back and forth from one practice to another and filling any empty minutes with homework is the frazzled state of our schedule at the moment.
All this to say, that I don’t have a ton of time to prepare dinner. Lazy Lasagna is like the equivalent of the breakfast for dinner night. And I don’t really care what who-ha from the Food Network says, everyone deserves to have a “breakfast for dinner” type of night. With all the ingredients of regular lasagna, Lazy Lasagna provides all the tasty comfort of our favorite casserole, whilst skipping the more time consuming layering steps.
Flavor, Flavor, Flavor
Don’t be fooled, this Lazy Lasagna may be lazy, but it isn’t lacking in the flavor department. In fact, I’m always looking for ways to bring flavors up a notch.
There are two ways to win the flavor award with Lazy Lasagna. First, is to use sausage instead of hamburger. For obvious reasons, (hint: spices) sausage adds a ton more flavor than regular old hamburger.
Second, use some high quality noodles and salt them thangs as they boil. I like to grab three dollar noodles over the 98 cent generic ones. I know this is really EXTRA of me, but the noodles make up a majority of the dish, so why not grab some that taste good, or at least have a taste. Also, add a bit of salt into your noodles water bath. This is the one and only time your noodles will absorb salt, so give them a little flavor boost.
That Prep Game
Now it’s time to get that prep game on. This is where we cut out all the fancy layering and get to spend a little less time shaking that three year old off our leg. Quickly brown your sausage and cook your spendy noodles in that salt water.
The laziest part of our Lazy Lasagna is where we simply throw all the ingredients together in one pot, and mix. Yes, cheese, sausage, sauce, seasonings and noodles become one big happy family.
Since we don’t want to be too slothful with our Lazy Lasagna, we are going to reserve a bit of sauce for the top of our not-lasagna. This will keep our dish from drying out as we bake it.
More Cheese Please
Once you have thoroughly sauced the top of your noodles, it’s time for the artistic cheese sprinkle.
Speaking of cheese, I grew up with cottage cheese instead of ricotta in my lasagna. Maybe it’s because of how I was raised, but I’m convinced that cottage cheese makes a meltier more moist lasagna. Feel free to use ricotta if that’s your thing, we need not judge the cheese choices.
It’s As Good As It Looks
Your Lazy Lasagna will bake just as it’s more high maintenance sister would. Surprisingly this version is not as sloppy as you may assume, and can still be dished out into somewhat neat squares, if you’re into that.
This recipe has easily become one of our families favorite meals. Not only is it super quick and easy to whip up, but it’s recognizable comfort food flavor for the kids. They even eat it without complaining which is a big win. I truly hope this recipe brings a bit of calm into your evening.
Enjoy!
Lazy Lasagna
Ingredients
- 1 package spaghetti noodles
- 2 jars of your favorite spaghetti sauce We like our "lasagna" extra saucy
- 1.5 lbs ground Italian sausage you can use more, just cut out some of the noodles.
- 16 oz small curd cottage cheese
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese shredded I often just use one small package of the pre-shredded Italian cheese mixture.
- 1 1/2 cups Mozzarella cheese shredded
- 2 tsp minced garlic
- 1 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1/2- 1 tsp salt to taste
- 1/4-1/2 tsp pepper to taste
Instructions
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Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Cook your noodles according to the package instructions in a large pot, adding about two teaspoons of salt into the water. Brown your sausage while your noodles boil.
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When your sausage is fully cooked, take it off of the heat, drain the fat, and mix in all of your sauce. Set aside.
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After your noodles are cooked, drain them and put them all back into your pot. Add cottage cheese, 1/4 cup of Parmesan, 1/4 cup of Mozzarella (or one handful if you're using the pre-shredded mixed Italian cheese), 3/4 of your sauce, garlic, seasoning and salt and pepper into the pot with your noodles. Mix well.
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Pour your noodle mixture into a 9×13 baking dish and spread into an even layer. Top with the remaining sauce mixture. Sprinkle the rest of your Parm and Mozz or mixed Italian cheese over the top.
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Bake for 30 minutes at 350. I like to turn on the broiler for the final two or three minutes of cooking time to get a golden brown finish.
Need Dessert?
