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A good friend once joked with me in her kitchen, “80% store-bought, 20% homemade, 100% of the credit.” To continue our month of dinners that people actually make, here’s an easy take on classic lasagna. This dish takes just 35 minutes from start to finish, and is made on the stove with a handful of pre-made ingredients. Carla Snyder, author of One Pan, Whole Family, shows us how it’s done…
Stovetop Lasagna with Spinach
From Carla Snyder’s One Pan, Whole Family
The quest for weeknight meals usually leaves lasagna out of the game. Boiling noodles and cooking up sauce just isn’t on my radar on a hectic weeknight. But lasagna is something my kids would always eat, and to be honest, my husband and I are rather fond of it as well. So I came up with a lasagna made in a skillet, on the stove, no boiling of noodles or separate pot of sauce required. I use no-boil lasagna sheets (which are genius) and mix the ricotta cheese in with the meat and tomato mixture (I am genius), eliminating the big assembly. There’s a bag of spinach in there as well. The kids won’t even notice because they’ll be so busy gobbling it all up. Delicious lasagna with one-pan cleanup. I promise.
Recipe: Stovetop Lasagna with Spinach
Serves 4-6
You’ll need:
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground meatloaf mix (beef, pork and veal)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
5 oz baby spinach
1 1/2 cups jar red marinara sauce
3/4 cup beef broth
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
Red pepper flakes (optional)
6 no-boil lasagna noodles
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
On a large cutting board, chop the onion and mince the garlic. Heat a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. When the oil shimmers, add the onion and sauté until it begins to soften, about 1 minute. Add the garlic, meat loaf mix, 1 teaspoon of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Break the meat into small pieces with a spatula as it cooks. Cook until the meat is no longer pink.
Add the spinach in two batches, turning with tongs until it wilts, about 1 minute. Stir in the sauce, broth, ricotta cheese and red pepper flakes. Stir and bring to a boil. Taste and adjust the seasoning with more salt, pepper or pepper flakes. Remove from the heat.
Transfer two-thirds of the meat mixture to a medium bowl. Lay three of the noodles in the pan, breaking them up to fit so it covers the sauce left in the pan. Cover with half the sauce and the remaining three noodles. Top with the remaining sauce, pushing the noodles down into the sauce so that they are covered. Sprinkle with the mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Cover and return the pan to medium-low or low heat. Simmer until the noodles are tender, about 15 minutes.
Serve hot and sprinkle with basil.
Thank you so much, Carla! Your new cookbook is awesome.
P.S. More recipes, including linguini with zucchini and 5-ingredient lemon chicken.
(Reprinted from One Pan, Whole Family by Carla Snyder with permission by Chronicle Books, 2018. Thanks to Franny Eremin for helping with this series.)
