Easy Lasagna Soup Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What not to do when making lasagna? ›

Too much between one layer and another will keep you from ever getting a perfect slice. Too little and all you'll taste is pasta. Do not put large pieces of vegetables or meat in lasagna for the same reason as above. To get a perfect lasagna, the filling should be finely sliced or even creamy.

Lasagna, famed worldwide, has ancient origins and remains an Italian superstar dish. Basically, lasagna is a baked casserole made with wide flat pasta and layered with fillings such as ragú, bechamel, vegetables and various cheeses. Unsurprisingly, every Italian region has its own traditional recipe.

Boiling lasagna noodles is really overrated. There really isn't any reason to do it. And you don't need those newfangled "oven ready" noodles. Just let the regular type noodles soak up liquid from the sauce and cook in the oven - Presto!

Yes, you can absolutely boil your lasagna noodles – even the oven-ready type. I prefer to par-boil (partially boil) oven-ready dried noodles for lasagna for 3-5 minutes before they become “al dente”. Al dente is an Italian term that literally means 'to the tooth'.

But boiling them first, even just submerging them in hot water for 5 minutes prior to lasagna assembly changes the texture of the noodle. It plumps it up. Unboiled noodles, while tender, are not as plump. Just gives it a slightly different texture.

While you don't need to cook their no-boil noodles for a traditional layered-up lasagna, they advise, "If you are making lasagna roll-ups, you can boil Barilla® Oven-Ready Lasagna for 3-5 minutes, so the sheets become more pliable and can be easily rolled." Ronzoni recommends that their Oven Ready Lasagna noodles be ...

I have had great success just simply substituting out the traditional and in with the no-boil, without any modification to the recipe. Usually I end up letting the dish sit for a while (5 minutes or so), and the liquid ends up starting to soak in at that point.

Some acidic bakes (like fruit cobblers) and lasagna or casserole (containing tomatoes, citrus, or other acidic fruit) may bake best in a glass dish, to prevent the metal from reacting to the acidic ingredients.

Acidic ingredients like tomatoes and citrus can react with aluminum (the most common metal used in bakeware), creating a metallic taste in your food. This is why lasagna and other casseroles with acidic ingredients are often baked in glass.

Milk. It tenderises the meat, to leave you with the most tender ragù.

Does real Italian lasagna have ricotta? ›

While ricotta is included in certain varieties of lasagna in Italy, the style that serves as the primary inspiration for American recipes is the one from the region of Emilia Romagna. There, it's traditionally layered with pasta, bolognese, and béchamel—with no ricotta to be found.

The primary differences I found between American lasagne and Italian lasagne were: The use of a layer or two of white bechamel (“"besciamella”) sauce imparts a nice creaminess to the lasagne in Italy. The pasta sheets seemed thinner and “fresher” in Italian pasta, very tender and with a “"melt in your mouth” texture.

Despite what you might think, there are not very many ingredients in a basic Italian lasagna. The lasagna noodles, a meat sauce, bechamel sauce, and mozzarella are practically all you need.

YES!! Absolutely. I first saw this approach in the January/February 2008 edition of Cooks Illustrated. You parcook no-boil lasagna noodles for about 5 minutes in boiled water (heat off) until they are flexible enough to roll.

Turn lasagna sheets into soup

Yes, it's that good. Remove the casings from Italian sausages and break up the meat, then saute it with onions in your Instant Pot, along with marinara sauce, chicken broth, and canned diced tomatoes. Snap dried lasagna sheets into the soup (not the no-boil type).

The brilliant thing about lasagne is, of course, that it can be treated simply as sheets of pasta. “If you parboil them briefly, so they're floppy, you can then use a sharp knife to cut them into tagliatelle,” Roddy says.

The main difference between oven-ready lasagna noodles and regular lasagna noodles is that oven-ready noodles are pre-cooked and dehydrated to a lower moisture content than regular noodles. This means that they can be used in recipes without boiling or precooking, as they will cook and soften during the baking process.