The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
I've made lasagna before and it's come out great but it was a hell of a lot more prep time than 15min. I'll happily blame this on my own shortcomings but then I'm the guy who has to make it.
I'm assuming all cheeses are pre-shredded/grated. Really, the bottle-neck is waiting on the noodles.
It usually takes me just a bit longer to brown meat/vegies and get the sauce up to temperature, but it's pretty close. Also, don't listen to recipes that say to just stick the pasta down uncooked. You don't have to completely cook them, but you want them soft. I actually put a layer of pasta down first, then layer sauce and cheese on top. Honestly, you could pour it all in a blender and throw it in the pan, and it'll come out delicious anyway.
It's more than 15 minutes to prep, but not much more. I've certainly cooked things that take a lot more prep, and for lasagna, all the steps are easy. You can make spaghetti sauce? Great. Make more, add some ground sausage, mushrooms, onions, and whatever spices you like and you can make lasagna sauce. You can boil water, right? You can cook the lasagna pasta (there's a slight extra bit because they're long wide strips, so you kinda have to soften them and bend them as you put them in unless you have a *huge* pot). After that, it's just a matter of opening the containers of your cheeses and dolloping them out 1/3rd at a time (depending on how many layers you do).
The only problem I run into (and I do this
every freaking time ) is that I make the first layer too thick (too much sauce), and the top couple layers end out thin. I need to actually like measure out 1/3rd of my damn sauce because apparently I can't eyeball it to save my life. Um... See my "you could put everything in a blender" comment above to see how unimportant this really ends out to the final product though.
The biggest thing with lasagna isn't the time, but the cost. For a full sized pan (which will make like 12 servings btw), is about $30 in materials. Mostly, it's all the cheese. You can buy the pre-made stuff for much much cheaper in the store, but trust me, the taste difference (even using mostly pre-made components) is massively worth it.
Edited, Nov 3rd 2011 11:38am by gbaji