Meat Lasagna

Finally a use for leftover spaghetti sauce. About a week ago I made spaghetti the same way I always do. The first meal of it is always served up over al dente pasta; for me, that'd be served over fusilli (the spiral shape). The second meal of it is generally served over toasted garlic bread. It's a grain, so, just skip the noodles and go straight to the bread. The third meal is usually over steamed rice. Ok, so you can see where this iteration of spaghetti sauce is going? After the second spaghetti meal, I decided to use the remainder of the sauce to make lasagna.

This is something I hadn't ever considered making before even though I really enjoy eating it: meat lasagna. Although, I'm not terribly a fan of cheese. I can eat cheese. There are a few types of cheese that I prefer above all others. But hey, lasagna is a tradition and should be made with its traditional cheese inclusions. I'm just not one to really stock three different cheeses on my fridge at the same time. For this dish, I made a special trip to the grocery store and picked up 8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese.

This is my first time cooking with mozzarella cheese; heck, it was my first time buying the cheese. I don't know why my friend Matt loves the cheese. It is really quite bland, IMHO. Most lasagna recipes call for parmesan cheese.. a lot of it, like more than 8 oz... of a hard cheese that is typically used as a condiment or bread topping. Anyhow. No parmesan cheese in this recipe.

I did struggle a bit with preparing the lasagna noodles; seeing how my largest stockpot was already housing the quarts of spaghetti sauce. Here's what I did for the noodles. Remember the magic crockpot I picked up about two months ago? It became really useful to parboil the noodles enough so that when I picked them up, they didn't break. The noodles didn't need to be cooked to al dente. I put all the noodles (for this batch, I used 9 lasagna noodles--3 for each layer) in the crockpot with some olive oil and added boiling water twice. Drain noodles, drizzle olive oli, and set aside.

Ingredients

a leftover batch of spaghetti sauce (I may have had about two quarts)
9 lasagna noodles
8 oz fresh mozzarella, diced
3 oz extra cheese, any meltable kind (I used muenster cheese, 1/4" diced)

The quantity of lasagna noodles depends on the size of the dish you are going to bake the lasagna in. 9 noodles is enough for a 3-layer meat lasagna baked in a 9" x 13" x 2" baking dish. Although, I found out pretty quickly after the second layer that I didn't have enough cheese. Heck, I practically ran out of sauce too. Most instructions will tell you to bake the lasagna covered for 40 minutes and uncovered for the remaining 10-15. The uncovered baking is to melt the cheese, if you had any sprinkled on top. I didn't, so I didn't uncover the dish until I took it out of the oven.

Prepare the baking dish by adding some olive oil to the bottom and spreading it around.

Spread a thin layer of spaghetti sauce on top of the oil. This is to keep the noodles from sticking to the pan.

Add the first layer of three lasagna noodles, side by side, in a single layer.
Next, sprinkle a layer of mozzarella cheese on top.
And, on top of that add a layer of meat sauce.

Repeat this until you are out of lasagna noodles, meat sauce, and cheese.

I don't know if the cheese is supposed to go first or if the meat sauce is. I really haven't examine the construction of past lasagna entreés all that closely.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes.

No need to preheat the oven. If your covered lasagna is ready for the oven, stick it in there as the oven is heating up. This is a very forgiving recipe and does not care that you overheat it.

Makes a lot. Serves 8-10.

Why muenster cheese? It's what I had on hand to make sandwiches for lunch. Hmm...

Use whatever cheese you like in your recipe. These cheeses are awfully popular in lasagna: ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, cheddar, and cottage.

Very tasty. I'd do it again if I had the ingredients on hand.