Freestyle Lasagna

MMMM Cheesy!

I love lasagna. I do not like the time it takes to prepare lasagna. The complicated sauce, the mixing of cheeses, cooking the noodles (while somehow managing NOT to destroy them all)… well you see my point. This is my freestyle version. It took all of maybe 20min prep time. Not to mention the $saved!

Ingredients:

2 mild Italian sausage links

2 jars favorite pasta sauce

1 pasta sauce jar of water

15oz ricotta cheese

3cups shredded Italian cheeses

1 lb. ribbon pasta

Put sauces and water in crock pot with 2 sausage links. Cook all day (or night - easily done ahead of time) on low. After simmering for several hours, sausage will be ready to fall apart. Just chop it up and add it back into the sauce.

Preheat oven to 350°

Cover the bottom of a large casserole dish with a bit of sauce just to prevent sticking. Top with about half the uncooked noodles and more sauce. Dot with small spoonfuls of ricotta and sprinkle with shredded cheese.



Not too much cheese on this layer, you want the sauce to really be able to work

Next top with the rest of the dry noodles, and the sauce. Eyeball this part. You want enough liquid to cover the pasta. As you can see in my picture below, it looks soupy, but it turned out perfect!


When you have enough sauce, dot with the remainder of the ricotta and kind of stir it in a bit so it looks like this:



It looks funny, but trust me, it works!

Top with remainder of shredded cheeses. Cover with foil and bake. Starting with the sauce hot, mine took about 20 minutes for the pasta to get tender. If you are starting with it cold, or you made the whole thing ahead of time, you will have to cook longer. Just test a small bit of the pasta to make sure. Once pasta starts to get tender remove the foil and continue baking until golden brown. Again, this took about 20min for me.

Isn't that pretty???

Let sit on stove for about 5 min before serving. Rave reviews for this one from the whole family!