Homemade Lasagna (finally)!

I'm going to try to ignore the fact that I haven't posted since May. Can you? For me...please?

I'm going to do a quick post (to make myself feel better) on how I make my lasagna. I cheat a bit.

So we'll need:
1 16oz tub of cottage cheese
1 16oz tub of ricotta cheese
1 egg
1lb to 2lb hamburger (I try to use 97%)
1 26oz jar of preferred spaghetti sauce in preferred flavor
1 box of no boiling required (oven ready) lasagne noodles
2 to 3 8oz bags of shredded cheese in preferred flavor
Salt and pepper to taste

Hmm, I think that covers everything. We'll see.

Set your oven to 425F.

So, start out by cooking your hamburger. You can broil it or fry it up in a pan. We've always plopped the hamburger right into a pan, pulled it all apart with a spatula, seasoned it (we use Lawry's seasoning salt with some garlic salt) then added a lid to the pan and cooked the meat over medium heat.

While the hamburger is sizzling in the pan, mix your cottage and ricotta cheese in a large mixing bowl. Add your egg, salt and pepper and continue to mix. The egg helps the cheeses stay together as your lasagna is baking...little tip I took from my sister.

Because the noodles do not have to be boiled, it cuts the prep time in half. These no-boil noodles are the best things invented. They're still just as soft and noodle-y because they soak up the moisture from everything else.

Once your hamburger is done, drain it as much as possible. When that's done, add in your spaghetti sauce and cook it over low heat to warm the sauce up to the hamburger. Here is also where you would add any additional seasoning, making sure to get a great marriage of flavors and smells.

While that is getting to a simmer, pick out the baking dish you'll be using. I like using the clear glass because you can see all of the ingredients cooking together, layer by layer.


So by now, I'll have my bowl of cheeses, bowl of meat/spaghetti sauce, and box of noodles out on the counter. I'll have opened my bags of shredded cheeses, ready to be used. I do it this way (dirtying up all these dishes) because I have limited counter space. This way, all of my things are right there together and I can access them each quickly to make my layers.

Start layering the ingredients:

Hamburger 

Cottage/ricotta cheeses

Shredded cheeses

Noodles

So obviously I never put too much shredded cheese in the layers because I wanted it all for the top. I'm greedy like that.

Pop that in the oven for anywhere between 30 minutes and 45 minutes, depending.

It should come out looking like this:

We love the crunch of the cheese. It's fabulous.

Serve this with homemade garlic bread and cheese sauce, it's sure to become a family favorite!

-Erin

Deep Fried Ranch Mushrooms!

Don't they just look so good?!

They are!

 

 

But as an honest blogger, I'll tell you something. I much would have rather preferred the mushrooms sauteed and then deep fried. Fresh mushrooms just have that "dirt" taste and smell about them.

Ingredients:

1 container of fresh mushrooms

2 cups of flour

1 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch mix

2 cups of fine bread crumbs

4 (-ish) eggs, beaten

 

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour and ranch mix. Also add any other seasonings you may want to use. I added just a dash of garlic salt. In another medium sized bowl, beat all the eggs. Also have another medium sized bowl with the bread crumbs. This would also be the time to slice the mushrooms if you didn't want them left whole. (Sautee them at this point as well, I would think.)

We set ours up in the order we'd be going. We also had a baking sheet out to place all of the readied mushrooms on before frying. The process of breading the mushrooms didn't take too long, but we started the oil beforehand anyways. Plus, the longer the oil is on and the hotter it gets, the fast the mushrooms fry.

Flour/ranch combo, eggs, bread crumbs.

 

 So you coat the mushroom in the flour/ranch mix first, then roll it around in the eggs. This part was tricky because the eggs really did not want to stick to the flour. So you had to get down and dirty. You couldn't help but get your fingers completely filthy with this mess. 

Then we found that just placing the mushroom in the bowl and then sprinkling/shoveling the bread crumbs onto the mushroom worked better than rolling it around because at this stage, all of the coatings would just slip off from your fingers. 

 

I told my husband we should just dip his fingers into the fryer. Well, they were coated thicker than the dang mushrooms!

 

 

 These three mushrooms turned out really nice. I took my sweet time with them. After this, it all went to hell. My husband and I tag-teamed the breading process and then I fried them while he held the plate with the paper towel.

 

Just about fifteen to twenty seconds of being rolled around in the deep fryer and these babies turned out nice and golden brown. I was rather pleased with them. From my experience, I never really did more than two or three mushrooms at a time. Mostly because I wanted to be able to control the time spent on one side. And they really have a mind of their own when rolling around in there.

This is a mushroom cut in half. You can't REALLY tell but the mushrooms were barely cooked. Hence my reasoning for the mentioning of sauteeing the mushrooms before hand.

Anyways. If you want something different to add to a dinner menu, these would be it. I'd tweak the recipe a bit to compliment whatever else was being offered, but still eat them on their own as well. My six year old couldn't get enough of them. :]

 

-Erin