Cora's Cottage

Lasagna is one of my favorite meals; however, living in a small town, it can be very difficult to source some of the ingredients that I like to use when making lasagna. For example, it can be difficult to find ricotta cheese in my local grocery store.

To help remedy this problem, I found a lasagna recipe through my sister-in-law that calls for cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I have never struggle to find cottage cheese on the shelves of our local, small town grocery store, so this was the perfect ingredient swap.

This lasagna recipe is also very simple and very quick. It’s very easy to double or even triple to throw in the freezer to have meals ready at the drop of a hat. That is one of the main reasons this is one of my favorite recipes.

There are three main pieces to making this lasagna. The meat sauce, the cheese sauce, and the noodles. The meat sauce is simply made up of ground meat, Italian seasoning, and your tomato-based pasta sauce. The cheese sauce is made up of cottage cheese, eggs, and Parmesan cheese. The noodles are simply your favorite lasagna noodles. These three different parts are layered until you have completed your lasagna, typically 3 to 4 layers will fill your pan depending on how deep your pan is.

For this recipe, I like to do a deep dish 9 x 13 pan, layering the noodles, cheese, and lasagna four times. I usually start my layering off by adding a little bit of pasta sauce to the bottom of the pan to ensure that nothing sticks. I then start with my noodles, followed by my cheese sauce, and then my meat sauce. I repeat the steps until I have four layers or the pan is full which ever comes first. To top off the pan, I had a generous helping of shredded mozzarella.

As I mentioned above, this recipe is perfect to double or triple and freeze a couple of pans. I simply cover the top with tinfoil before placing in the freezer and write the baking instructions on the top of the tin foil. The tin foil can be left on top while baking or can be removed; however, I usually remove it before baking.

I have stored lasagna in the freezer for up to three months without an issue of freezer burn. When I am ready to bake, there are two methods that I can take. If I am thinking ahead, I will pull the lasagna out the night before, and allow it to thaw on the counter overnight then put it in the fridge until I am ready to bake or I will thaw it completely in the fridge for 24-48 hours.

However, I do not always think this far ahead and sometimes I need to bake the lasagna from frozen. In this case I simply remove the lid and tinfoil and place the lasagna in the oven before preheating the oven to bake. Baking from frozen can take longer so I simply set my timer for the same amount of time and check the lasagna to make sure it is warm through before serving.

Over time I have learned it is best to allow the lasagna to sit for at least 10 minutes to cool before serving. This recipe holds heat extremely well and burnt mouths are never a good thing! While I allow the lasagna to cool, I will often make homemade garlic bread by slicing bread, buttering generously, and sprinkling with garlic powder and cheese. Baking for about 10 minutes is perfect especially if you broil for the last 2 minutes at the end.