Making lasagna for hours won't make me feel tired. On the contrary, it is time for me to relax and find peace. Don't think I'm crazy. When making lasagna, I not only turn on the music, but also talk to my ingredients from time to time. In this way, from dough to meat sauce to white sauce, layers of ingredients are ready. Although lasagna is never finished in 20 minutes, its making process is not complicated. A few mistakes will not affect its taste, and you can make full use of it in the cooking process and develop your own exclusive formula.
Today, let's learn about lasagna layer by layer, so that you can taste the Roman holiday without leaving home. What kind of meat and cheese is the best? How to make pure white juice? Do you want to use whey cheese filling? We will reveal the answer step by step. If you have any unanswered questions, please leave a message in the comments and let us know!
Homemade traditional lasagna: detailed explanation of steps
Before we begin, let's briefly introduce what "traditional" lasagna is. Of course, there are countless recipes about authentic lasagna, and every household has its own set of cooking methods and even secret recipes. But generally speaking, what we call lasagna is lasagna. This dish originated in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, and is made of multiple layers of dough, tomato sauce, white sauce and cheese. This is also the "basic section" that we will focus on today.
Real lasagna
Whether to use dry dough or fresh dough depends mainly on time. Every supermarket sells dried dough. You can prepare according to the cooking instructions, generally without preheating. According to my personal experience, if you use dry dough, you should make the meat sauce thinner so that the dry dough can absorb enough water. If you want to save time by making lasagna at home, dry dough is certainly the first choice.
But if you must make the perfect lasagna, I suggest you choose fresh dough. You can also buy it in supermarkets or more upscale food stores. Even if you can't buy fresh lasagna dough near your home, you can definitely buy flour, eggs and water, so you can collect all the raw materials for making dough!
After all the ingredients are mixed and kneaded into a smooth dough, the dough should be kneaded for at least 30 minutes. Then roll it into dough with a noodle machine or a rolling pin and cut it into appropriate sizes. If the noodles are too sticky, add some dry flour. It is best to cook the lasagna dough with salt water for 6-7 minutes. Before using the dough, you can put it on an oiled baking tray and cover it with plastic wrap to prevent the dough from sticking together or drying out.
Unlike lasagna, which uses dry dough and fresh dough, meat sauce can collect more juice, so don't put too much on the dough. Too thin a layer of meat sauce may turn the whole lasagna into a paste.
Delicious meat sauce
Meat: traditional lasagna uses ground beef, and it is also common to add ground pork or poultry meat to ground beef sauce. Some loyal fans of lasagna will take a little bacon and fry it in a pan, then add minced meat. The meat sauce made in this way will have extra salty and smoky flavor. If you don't want to use minced meat, you can use Italian sausage instead.
Vegetables: among my personal favorite recipes, I don't care much about seasonings and vegetables. The most important thing is to have onions, garlic and carrots. Celery is also often used, while sweet pepper, spinach, zucchini and mushrooms are less common. If you add eggplant, your lasagna will look like Mushaka. The important principle of choosing vegetables is to choose vegetables with low water content. Dry vegetables as needed, or heat for a long time to evaporate excess water, otherwise your lasagna is probably too "watery".
Sauce: on your own stove, the sauce cooked patiently with fresh and juicy tomatoes is of course the best choice for the perfect lasagna. But in the cold season (when I want to eat lasagna most), the fresh tomatoes I bought are always tasteless. Therefore, it is best to use canned tomatoes in winter, and choose canned tomatoes that are as pure as possible without additives and seasonings. Using canned tomatoes is another way to save time in making lasagna, because fresh tomatoes obviously take much longer to cook. In addition, tomato sauce, white wine or red wine can be added to the sauce.
Herbs and spices: The herbs and spices used also have secrets. In addition to fresh or dried herbs, such as basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme, some kitchen experts also put cinnamon or fennel into tomato juice. If you like spicy food, you can certainly add a little pepper.
The last cooking skill: The longer the stew is stewed, the stronger the taste. Some Italian grandmothers will stew the meat sauce 12 hour or even longer. It doesn't matter if it doesn't last so long, but you should set aside 30 minutes in advance to cook the meat sauce. If you like, you can also prepare minced meat and tomato juice separately, layer by layer and put them together. This way, the minced meat should be fried to brown, and don't put too much seasoning into the meat. Most seasonings and herbs should be put in tomato juice.