Here’s the first recipe I want to disclose. This recipe was given to my mother from my grandmother who, if memory serves me correctly, was in the The Buffalo News, from Buffalo, NY. My birthplace. For years I would never disclose what was in it, it was something I held special to my heart, but here and there a few of my friend have helped me “make it.” So this is one of those, is it really a secret? Now I haven’t searched the internet to see if there is a copyright or anything on it. I am spilling this from memory.
Meat Sauce: 2 Pounds Ground Beef (sometimes 3 there’s never enough sauce!), 16 ounce can of Contadina Tomato Puree, 8 ounce can Contadina Tomato Sauce, 5 or 6 ounce can (it’s the small one you can hardly open with a can opener) Contadina Tomato paste, and “Secret Ingridient” 2 packages of McCormick Spaghetti Sauce mix (it’s been made with other brands of tomato products, I found that Contadina works best)
Mom always made this the day before, and I have only once made it and had the day I made it, yeah, make it the day before, it needs to marinate! Now I want Lasagna!
To make the sauce, Brown and pour out excess grease and fat from the ground beef, pour in all tomato products and add the spaghetti sauce mix, cover and simmer while making other items. One can add sugar, to sweeten it, but I never did.
Noodles, Lasagna noodles, need 15 of them. the pan which is a cake pan 13x9x2 inches can hold 3 layers, 4 noodles a piece, I always munched a few if there was extra sauce to scoop out of the pan for a “taste of deliciousness” so you make those according to package, I threw in some Sea Salt and Extra Virgin Olive Oil to “try” to prevent sticking, doesn’t always work
Ricotta mixture: 15 or 16 ounce container of Ricotta cheese and 1 egg. put it in a bowl and whip them together, I covered and put in the fridge until I was ready to start building the pan.
Mozzarella Cheese: 1 to 2 lbs sliced Mozzarella, nom nom
Parmesan cheese: now the recipe called it, I never used it, but that’s me!
From start to finish this usually took me about 2 hours with all the cooking and simmering, so now it’s time to build the pan (included in the 2 hours)
13x9x2 in pan: 1st layer, 2 ish cups of meat sauce, spread evenly as can be, 1 layer of lasagna noodles 3 across main pan side by side, 1 folded over on one end.
2nd layer, 2 ish cups of meat sauce, layer of sliced mozzarella, for me it was liek 8 slices, take 1/2 the ricotta mixture and spread it as evenly as possible, good luck not smearing the meat sauce, it’s lasagna! 4 more lasagna noodles however, offshift this layer from what you layed down the layer below
3rd repeat second layer, meat sauce, mozzarella, other 1/2 of ricotta, 4 noodles, off shifting from what you did on layer 2
4th layer, simple! whatever meat sauce is left and mozzarella!
Cover the pan with Aluminum Foil place in fridge and let it marinate over night. It can be thrown in the oven, but I always found it best to make it the day before
When it’s time to eat, Oven 350 Degrees, bake for 60 min or until done. Just think of all that gooey gooeyness. Below is one I made a few years ago just before it went into the oven!
