There are so many possibilities when making lasagne. Some are made with béchamel, others with ricotta cheese, with seafood or even with spinach. You can even get a little creative if you are so inclined. Anyway, lasagne is one of my first loves, contending strongly with kenkey. I love anything pasta first of all and secondly, cheese is pretty great too- so lasagne will always be the perfect combination. This recipe is a delicious lasagne made with minced beef, silky béchamel sauce and will leave you asking for seconds and maybe even more.
What I try to avoid is having too much oil in my meat sauce because that just makes the entire dish too greasy, since the cheese will release some oil and the béchamel also has butter. I find lasagne quite decadent so there is really no need to overdo it. Like Mportomportor, I find lasagne very comforting, the kind of food that wraps its arms around you.
In my experience using a minced meat sauce that is overly reduced plus a combination of uncooked sheets just prolongs the cooking process unnecessarily, so my tip is to make the sauce a bit runnier than you would if you were making say, a regular bolognese for example.
The meat sauce, combined with the béchamel sauce ensures that the extra liquid cooks the sheets perfectly. But there are other ways to get around this. You can use lasagne sheets which require you to cook them before use. You can also cover the lasagne with aluminium foil once it goes into the oven and then take it off once the lasagne is cooked and leave to brown. Personally, making the sauce somewhat not too thick has worked perfectly and by the time your lasagne is fully cooked, all that extra liquid is non-existent.
If for some reason, while you are making your bechamel sauce, you're unfortunate to get a lumpy sauce, simply pass it through a sieve. Some recipes require that the milk is hot, while it's being added to the flour and that helps reduce the probability of a lumpy sauce. I usually use room temperature milk or even cold milk at times and I haven't had any major problems.
That's all there is to this very easy lasagne which goes perfectly with a simple salad.
Simple Lasagne
Equipment
- Baking dish ( 20 cm x 30 cm)
Ingredients
- 500 grams minced beef
- 1 large onion chopped
- 1 garlic clove chopped
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 3 large tomatoes
- white pepper
- lemon basil
- 80 grams butter
- 2 tbsp flour
- 500 ml milk
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- black peppercorns crushed
- gouda cheese optional
- lasagne sheets
- 150 grams parmesan cheese shredded or grated
Instructions
- Heat oil in a pot and fry minced meat for about 3 minutes and then add onions and garlic and fry for a further 2 minutes.
- Add tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes and then add in blended tomatoes.
- Add a bit of water (or beef stock), so that sauce is not thick and let simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Season with salt and some white pepper.
- Add lemon basil or regular basil and then simmer for another 5 minutes and then set aside.
- Set aside. For the béchamel sauce, melt butter and then stir in flour making sure that it does not turn brown for about a minute.
- Add milk, ensuring that you stir to prevent lumps from forming. Stir until smooth and free from any lumps.
- Add some nutmeg, black pepper and gouda cheese to the béchamel sauce and let it thicken up. Cook for 5 minutes and set aside.
- In a glass dish or baking tray, place a layer of the beef sauce and then place the lasagne sheets on top of the sauce. Add the minced beef on top, the béchamel sauce and then sprinkle some of the parmesan cheese. Repeat until the glass dish full making sure the very top layer has minced meat sauce, béchamel and the rest of the parmesan on top.
- Bake for 35-45 minutes at about 200°C or until sheets are soft and the cheese is melted.
- Serve warm with a small salad.
Leave a Reply