roasted mushroom lasagna marinara
Hosting Christmas Day in my house offers us a very narrow needle to thread. It’s got to be:
Vegetarian-friendly, yet satisfying for the men who think they need meat to live
Homemade, but easy to make so we aren’t on our feet all day on Christmas
A standalone dish without labor-intensive sides (that’s Christmas Eve, and we’re tired)
More celebratory than what we’d eat on any ordinary weeknight
This math adds up to lasagna more often than not, with varying degrees of success. But this lasagna passed everyone’s test: from my dad who loves extra meat in his meat sauce, my mom who grew up making lasagna her mother’s way and wasn’t convinced about the no-boil noodles, my brother-in-law who secretly doesn’t love tomatoes, my pescatarian sister, my significant other (who, to be fair, eats everything), or me who has a LOT of established opinions about ricotta.
While we’ve tried all sorts of varieties—one made with my mushroom bolognese, one made with fresh pasta sheets, a spinach version that looked great going in but came out like soup—this was the unanimous winner, receiving the highest Family Lasagna Honor of being requested again for the following year before the pan was even gone.
These years of lasagna experiments have also given my mom and I extensive lasagna-making wisdom, which I will now share here.
Choose ricotta without stabilizers. Serious Eats writes about this a lot, and it’s not for nothing. Commercial ricotta that’s sold without gums or thickeners (like Bellwether farms or Calabro) will net you the smoothest, creamiest, least-gritty lasagna money can buy.
Whip the ricotta first. It feels like a dumb, annoying extra step that dirties the food processor. But bothering with it will turn the ricotta into more of a bechamel-like saucy texture, vs. that structured cheese layer you see in American lasagna. In fact, I like it so much that I would even consider it a substitute for bechamel in a traditional lasagna bolognese.
Spring for whole milk mozzarella. Most bagged mozz is part skim by default. While this is fine, whole milk mozz is the best here, preserving maximum stretch during its long cooking time. You can shred it yourself easily in a shredding disk of the food processor you will already be dirtying, but certain brands will sell bagged (I am not a bagged cheese elitist).
Start with your sauce hot. Assembling the lasagna using sauce straight from the stove cuts down on the cooking time, even using cold cheeses. The cook time WILL be wrong if you assemble in advance and put your lasagna straight from the fridge into the oven.
Use thin layers, and alternate the mushrooms. In an effort to use all the filling, we sometimes have overlayered the noodles. You want to have discernible pasta in between all the fillings, and no sponginess from having too much “stuff.” For this reason, and because mushrooms release water during baking even though they’re cooked prior to assembly, we found putting mushrooms only every other layer made us appreciate them more.
Customize your noodle shape to fit. Most roasting pans have curved sides. Noodles have square edges. This can prevent you from really getting them into the corners, and make it so they don’t fit four noodles neatly across. This year we discovered you can literally cut corners: take kitchen shears and just chop them off (or strategically break by hand) to make a trapezoid shape that nestles nicely into the pan.
As far as timing, I recommend starting backwards:
At least 4 hours before you want to eat, start the sauce
Roast the mushrooms either while the sauce is cooking, or do them ahead of time and store in the fridge (reheat them in a skillet before assembling)
Budget for 50 min of cooking time if you bake your lasagna using warm ingredients, 1 1/2 or more if everything is chilled
Allow for 15 minutes of cooling time so the lasagna “sets” before you eat it
For all this wisdom of experience, I have next to none photographing lasagna, and it shows. But we tried!
RECIPE
Traditional lasagna marinara layered with whipped ricotta, meaty roasted mushrooms, and stretchy mozzarella cheese, using no-boil noodles for ultimate lasagna convenience. Ideal to make ahead for holidays, or to save for Garfield mood emergencies.
Effortful time: 45 minutes
Total time: 4 hours (a lot of this is sauce simmering time)
Designed for a 13x9” pan, about 12 square portions
YOU NEED
For the roasted mushrooms
48 oz. baby bela mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
4 tbsp. olive oil (spray works great if you have it)
Salt, to taste
For the filling
24 oz. ricotta cheese, I prefer Bellwether Farms Basket Ricotta
6 oz. grated parmigiano reggiano
1 egg
1 tbsp. dried parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste
For the lasagna
16 oz. package no-boil lasagne noodles
6 cups whole milk mozzarella cheese
~10 cups marinara sauce, preferably homemade like this one (but good jarred, like Rao’s, is also okay!)
1/4 cup parmigiano reggiano
MAKE it
Prep your sauce by slowly simmering it on the stove while you complete the other steps.
Roast the mushrooms. Preheat the oven to 425°F. On parchment- or foil-lined cookie sheets (I needed 2 half-sheet pans), spread out all 48 oz. of sliced mushrooms and use your hands to coat with oil. Don’t salt them at this time. Roast for 35 minutes until crispy all around the edges, and remove from the oven. Salt them lightly while they rest on the sheets to cool. Coarsley chop them (you can use the food processor for this) and set aside.
Re-set the oven to 375°F (crack the door for a minute or two to cool it off).
Whip the ricotta. In a food processor, add the 24 oz. of ricotta, 6 oz. of grated parm, egg, parsley, a pinch of salt, and pepper. Process on high until it is a fluid consistency, still thick but able to drip off the back of a spoon.
Assemble the lasagna. We’ll be using a 13x9” pan for this. Bring your heated sauce, warm chopped mushrooms, ricotta mixture, and other cheeses over. Reserve 1 shredded cup of mozzarella and 4 noodles for the top. You will have plenty of sauce left over. Spread a layer of sauce on the bottom. Now stack in this order, using thin layers:
4 no-boil noodles side by side (see note 6 above, you can trim the corners if they don’t fit)
Ricotta mixture
Mushroom
Mozzarella
Noodles
Sauce
For the next layer, SKIP the mushrooms. Then repeat so that every other layer features mushrooms.
Final lasagna layer! Place the final 4 noodles on top of the lasagna. Cover the top with sauce, then sprinkle generously with the remaining 1 cup of mozzarella and the 1/4 cup of parm. Reserve all your leftover sauce, and put it back on the stove at a low simmer.
Bake the lasagna 50 minutes in your 375°F oven, covered in foil. Then remove foil and cook for 10 minutes longer, until the top is bubbly and a tiny bit brown.
Let it rest for 15 minutes under a foil tent to fully “set” the lasagna—this ensures it will cut cleanly without turning into a puddle. Cut into squares and use a small spatula to serve, ladling on the reserved sauce and extra grated parm to everyone’s taste.