Crock Pot Lasagna

I've made this recipe (from my pinterest) a few times and altered it a bit to make it less fatty-fat-fat. Something I learned the hard way is those noodles need to be pre-soaked in hot water (only for 5 minutes or so) or buried under a lot of sauce or else they are brittle little suckers. Also, there are three layers that go thusly: sauce, noodles, cheese. Technically there will be 4 layers or sauce unless you just want crusty cheese on top. Be careful or you will run out of sauce and have crusty lasagna, which just sounds gross.

You will need 8 oz. of lasagna noodles, 15 oz. of ricotta, 1 cup or mozzarella, 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan, and 32-36 oz of sauce (most recipes call for about 24 oz, but it came out way dry so I added more), and a crock pot, obviously. My sauce usually comes from left over spaghetti night, but you can buy the jarred stuff if you so desire ( I personally like the homemade stuff better).

So, get a plastic container large enough for you to lay out your noodles and fill it with hot water (it can be from the sink, you don't need to boil it) and lay aside while you prep the cheese. In a large mixing bowl, add the ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan. I mash it down with a fox because the ricotta usually comes out as a tower of cheese. Thoroughly mix all the cheese together. In another bowl (or pot with leftover sauce) add your desired amount of sauce.

In your crock pot, layer 1/4 of the sauce, 1/3 of your pre-soaked noodles (I ended up with 9 noodles, so 3 noodles per layer--you can break them apart to make them fit better if necessary), and 1/3 of your cheese. Repeat sauce, noodles, cheese, sauce, noodles, cheese. Then top off with your remaining sauce. Try to make sure none of the noodles or cheese are exposed, then have a tendency to do weird things that don't taste very good, like burning. Set your crock pot to low and set for 5 hours. Most recipes say 4-6 hours, but seriously, 6 hours makes your noodles soupy and 4 hours is just not quite done. So unless your crock pot goes into hyper drive on the regular, 5 hours should be good.

This usually only yields about five servings for us, but if you have kids or can manage to not eat a ton of this stuff, then you could pull off six.

Nutrition ahoy!

5-6 servings
		Cals		Tot fat		Sat fat		Trans		Sodium
8 oz. lasagna noodles		800		4		0		0		0
15 oz. skim ricotta		560		31.5		17.5		0		525
1 cup mozzarella*		320		24		14		0		800
1/4 cup grated parm		80		6		4		0		480
Meat sauce **		770		34		13		0		7084
Total		2530		99.5		48.5		0		8889
Per serving (6)		421.6667		16.58333		8.083333		0		1481.5
Per serving (5)		506		19.9		9.7		0		1777.8
*Can up to 1.5 cups of moz, to get nutrition data multiply by 1.5
* Meat sauce is from leftover spaghetti sauce + 1 can hunts sauce. This may vary for you depending on if you make your own sauce or buy it in a jar. Most recipes call for a 24 oz. jar, but that has always made a pretty dry lasagna. I use about 32-36 oz depending on the left overs. The version I made here has .375 lbs of ground beef (spaghetti sauce had .75 lbs, so left overs were half that) and 4.25 cups of sauce.