Homemade Lasagna

Homemade Lasagna

Ingredients:

• 1 pound, spicy Italian sausage
• 1 pound, ground beef (we did 80/20)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 28 ounce cans San Marzano tomatoes
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
• 1 box dry lasagna noodles
• 2 15 ounce containers of part-skim ricotta
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 finely grated parmesan cheese
• 1 cup Italian parlsey, finely chopped
• 1 cup fresh basil, finely chopped
• 1 pound shredded mozzarella

Directions:

1. In your large dutch oven, heat olive oil to medium high heat. Roll your sausage and beef into loose balls. Drop balls into oil to brown on all sides. Once all balls are browned, remove from dutch oven and set on a plate. (This is a great technique to get as much meat surface browned as possible, when you add all meat directly to dutch oven only a little bit of the quanity with get the delicious browned edges.)

2. Add onions to dutch oven and deglaze crispy bits with white wine. Then add meatballs back to dutch oven and start break up into smaller pieces with spatula. No balls shound be intact.

3. Then add in your garlic, tomato paste, red pepper flakes and dried oregano. Season with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste. Let all of these ingredients simmer together about 5 minutes.

4. Then add in your 2 cans of San Marzano tomatoes, breaking up the whole tomatoes with your spatula. Let simmer for about 20-30 minutes while you prepare other parts of the lasagna.

5. In a mixing bowl, mix together your ricotta, egg yolks, parmesan cheese, basil, Italian Parsley, salt & pepper. Mix well and set aside.

6. Preheat oven to 375, set oven rack in the top third of the oven. Bring 6 cups of salted water to a boil, then add in your lasagna noodles. You want to make sure they are al dente because they will cook more in the oven. Lay cook lasagna noodles on a kitchen towel when done to drain.

7. Lightly grease 13x9 baking dish with olive oil. Put a layer of sauce on the bottom of the dish, then a layer of 4 lasagna noodles, thin layer of the ricotta mixture, sauce, mozzarella. Continue this pattern of noodles, ricotta, sauce, mozzarella until you get to the top (about 3 total layers). Make sure you end with mozzarella cheese as your last layer.

8. Spray foil with non stick spray then cover baking dish tightly with foil. Cook for 45 minutes covered. Then remove foil and cook for 15-20 minutes uncovered. Then, remove from oven and let rest at 10 minutes. Top with fresh Italian parsley and basil.