Lasagne Bolognese with a bunch of Mozzarella cheese
You can find hundreds and hundreds of lasagne bolognese recipes on the internet, some better, some worse. I have written down a well-tried recipe for you, as we make it at home. As we are big fans of cheese, you can literally look forward to a whole pile of mozzarella.
Time:
2 hours
+
45 Min. baking time
Portions:
8
Difficulty:
MEDIUM
Ingredients:
- 12-16 lasagne sheets
- 500-600g mozzarela
- basil leaves to decorate
Bolognese Sauce
- 900g mixed minced meat
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 carrots
- 1-2cm thick slice of celery
- 1 medium-sized onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 canned tomatoes (diced or whole ones)
- 500ml red wine
- 150ml beef broth OR 1/2 cube of instant beef broth
- 2 twigs of fresh rosemary OR 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
- salt
- pepper
Béchamel Sauce
- 600ml whole milk
- 50g butter
- 40g flour
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 bay leaves
- 5 cloves
- salt
- pepper
Getting it done:
- 3 carrots · 1-2cm thick slice of celery · 1 medium-sized onion · 2 cloves of garlic · 2 twigs of fresh rosemary OR 1 tbsp dried rosemary
- First of all, let's prepare the Bolognese sauce. Grate the carrots and the slice of celery coarsely. Chop the onion and the garlic finely. If you use fresh rosemary, tear the rosemary leaves from the twigs and also finely chop them.
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Heat the olive oil in a large pot, add the chopped onion, the grated carrot and the celery. Roast until the vegetables get soft and golden brown - this takes approximately 7 minutes. After that, add the garlic and rosemary and roast for another 1-2 minutes.
- TIP! If the vegetables tend to burn after a few minutes, add a little bit of water (about 3 tablespoons). Don't mind adding water even several times if it boils away and starts to burn again - but always only a few spoonfuls. We want to roast the vegetables, not to stew them ;).
- 900g mixed minced meat
- Now it's time for the meat. Throw it into the pot with the vegetables and fry it on high heat until all sides start to golden nicely. Keep stirring now and then. As soon as the meat starts to release its gravy, do not lower the heat and continue to fry until all the juice has boiled away.
- 500ml red wine
- After that, pour red wine over the mixture and cook for another half an hour.
- 2 canned tomatoes (diced or whole ones) · 150ml beef broth OR 1/2 cube of instant beef broth · salt · pepper
- Add both cans of canned tomatoes and the beef broth. If you don't have any beef broth, half a cube of an instant one will do this time. Mix thoroughly. If you used canned whole peeled tomatoes, cut the large pieces into smaller ones with a wooden spoon. Add salt and pepper, but less is more at this stage, because the sauce is going to still thicken a lot. Ideally, cook for another hour and a half, adding water if needed. Afterwards season with salt and pepper once more and remove from the heat.
- TIP! All the water should be boiled away at the end and the sauce should be pretty thick, if you like the lasagne to hold its form on the plate like we do. If you like it more fluid, do not boil all the juice away.
- 600ml whole milk · 50g butter · 40g flour · 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg · 2 bay leaves · 5 cloves · salt · pepper
- About 15 minutes before finishing the bolognese sauce, preheat the oven to 210°C and start preparing the béchamel. As far as kitchen equipment, we will need one small pot, one medium-sized saucepan, a wooden spoon and a whisk. Preheat the milk in the pot together with the bay leaves and cloves just below the boiling point, stirring now and then with a wooden spoon so that the milk does not burn at the bottom. Then prepare a roux in the saucepan. Melt the butter in it, add flour and stir constantly over medium heat for about 30 seconds (The roux should be golden, but not brown in any case. If it starts to brown, remove it from the heat immediately!). After 30 seconds reduce the flame to a minimum and stirring constantly (preferably with a whisk), pour the strained hot milk into the pan. Stir until the roux is completely dissolved in the milk and the sauce thickens enough. As a reference consistency, imagine a yogurt - that's roughly our goal. Then remove from the heat. Add salt, pepper and ground nutmeg. Cover with a lid so that the bechamel sauce does not dry out.
- 500-600g mozzarela
- Cut the mozzarella into slices.
- 12-16 lasagne sheets
- Finally, the fun part begins. Assembling the individual layers of our lasagne! When I talk about layers, understand me like this: 1 layer = béchamel, lasagne sheets, Bolognese sauce. These three parts form one layer. We prefer three layers in our lasagne. Less would probably not make much sense and more is somehow too much for us, but it is completely up to you and it also depends on the size of your baking form (I use 30cm x 22cm). Depending on how many layers you decide to have, divide the Bolognese meat ragout approximately into as many parts. Divide the béchamel sauce into +1 parts, i.e. in my case, I divide the meat ragout (= Bolognese sauce) into 3 parts and the béchamel into 4.
- I like to spread the ragout and béchamel with a kitchen silicone brush, but a spatula works also well. The béchamel comes first, followed by lasagne sheets and then meat ragout. This is one layer. Repeat as many times as how many layers you decided to have and cover the last one with the last part of the béchamel sauce. If you love cheese as much as we do, you can here and there intersperse the layers with sliced mozzarella. On the very top put the mozzarella slices properly one next to the other.
- And it is done! Now shove it into the heated oven for about 35-45 minutes until a golden, crispy crust appears!
- basil leaves to decorate
- If you want the individual pieces of your lasagne to hold their shape on the plate, wait a while before cutting and let it cool down for a short time. The pieces look beautifully arranged this way as if from a cookbook! 🙂 Garnish with basil as desired!
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