One Pot Lasagna with Meat Sauce and Ricotta
This is lasagna for people who love eating it but hate making it. By cooking no-boil noodles directly in a rich meat sauce and adding creamy ricotta and browned mozzarella on top, you get all the cheesy, layered, sliceable payoff of classic lasagna without the tedious assembly or sink full of dirty dishes.
Ingredients
For the Meat Sauce
- Olive oil
- 450 g 80/20 ground chuck
- 225 g hot Italian pork sausage, casings removed (about 2 links)
- 200 g yellow onion, grated
- 20 g garlic, minced or pressed
- coarse salt
- 75 g tomato paste
- 1 g red chili flake
- 1 g dried oregano
- 800 g crushed tomatoes
- 550 g water
- 15 g Better Than Bouillon, beef flavor
- 8 g granulated sugar
- 10 g fresh basil, chopped
For the Ricotta Mixture
- 450 g whole milk ricotta
- 50 g Parmesan, grated
- 5 g coarse salt
- 2 g black pepper
- 1 egg
For the Pasta and Cheese topping
- 225 g oven-ready lasagna noodles, broken into about 2-inch pieces
- all of the ricotta mixture, from above
- 150 g shredded mozzarella
- 50 g Parmesan
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F / 205°C with a rack low enough to fit a lidded Dutch oven. Break the oven-ready lasagna noodles into roughly 2-inch pieces by breaking them in half and in half again. Grate the onions, mince/press the garlic, and chop the basil.
- Heat a 5.5- to 7-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat with a squiggle of olive oil. Add the ground chuck and sausage and brown, breaking the meat down with a meat chopper until fully cooked and about the size of lentils or smaller, around 8 minutes
- Stir in the grated onion, garlic and a strong pinch of salt. Cook for 3-5 minutes until the onion is soft and translucent.
- Add the tomato paste. Cook, stirring constantly until the tomato paste darkens from bright red to a rusty brick red. If the bottom starts getting too dark, add a splash of water to deglaze.
- Add the crushed tomatoes, water, chili flake, dried oregano, Better Than Bouillon and sugar. Be sure to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom. Bring to a simmer then reduce heat to low and partially cover and cook for 3 to 5 minutes to reduce.
- While the sauce simmers, mix the ricotta, Parmesan, salt, pepper and egg until smooth.
- Take the pot off the heat. Taste and adjust with another strong pinch of salt if needed and a little more sugar if the sauce tastes too tart. Stir in the basil.
- Scatter ⅓ of the noodles over the sauce in an even layer and press them down to the bottom of the pot to fully submerged. Repeat two more times, each with another ⅓ of the noodles. You'll press each layer beneath the sauce before adding the next. On the final layer, push sauce up and over any exposed noodles.
- Spoon the ricotta mixture over the top in 12 to 15 evenly spaced dollops, depending on the size of your dutch oven .
- Top with the mozzarella and a generous grating of Parmesan.
- Wipe any sauce off the inside rim of the pot with a damp paper towel.
- Cover and bake at 400°F / 205°C for 15 minutes.
- Raise the oven to 450°F / 230°C, remove the lid and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until the cheese is deeply browned in spots, the edges are bubbling hard, and a knife slides through the noodles with no resistance.
- Rest for at least 20 minutes before slicing. 30 to 40 minutes is even better.
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