Our panel of Epicurious experts returns, this time to answer your viewer submitted questions about lasagna!
How many layers should we be aiming for, exactly?
Is putting pickles in your meat sauce a criminal offense?
Join chef Frank Proto from the Institute of Culinary Education, food scientist Rose, editor David, home chef Julie, ketchup queen Emily, and level 1 extraordinaire John as they spin through your viewer-submitted questions on this episode of Epicurious FAQ.
- So when I was a kid, I watchedmy grandmother cook a lot,we were always in the kitchen,there was always somethingbeing made, you know?- Frank?- Oh!- Hi, I'm so glad to finally meet you!Hello, hello!- Pleasure to meet you!- I'm sorry to interrupt,I have a bunch of questions for you.So where do you keep the cow?So this is your wheat?So Frank, how do you sit onyour eggs without crushing them?As a chef, if you wannawish someone good luck,do you say break an egg?So Frank, let's say you're making lasagna.You don't have any tomato sauce,your homegrown tomatoes aren't ready yet,they're not gonna be ready for months.[laughing]Are there any other sauces you might use?Is there any other, let's say red sauces,you might use for lasagna?Red,sweet?- No.[bell dinging]I'm Frank, I'm a professional chefat the Institute for Culinary Educationand I've been cooking for 24 years.Any time you have a crowd over,you should make this lasagna.- Hi, I'm Julie, I am a level two chef.I make pasta a couple of times a week.It reminds me of the summer that I spentin Cortina d'Ampezzo.- Hi, I'm David and I'mthe editor of Epicurious.[paper stabbing]Oh, jeez.Jeez!- Hi, I'm Rose.I'm a food scientist.- And I'm John, I'm a level one chef.It's kind of like making a cakebecause of all the different layersand I just think it's really, really fun.- And here are all of the answers.- To all of your questions.- About lasagna.- Ay.- Let's go.[upbeat music]- How many layers ofpasta should you have?- You can have as many layers as you want,there are no rules!- I think your lasagnashould have 16 layers,which would be like fourto five layers of pasta.So if you're doing sauce on the bottomand then a layer of pasta andthen your cheese or bechameland then your sauce and blah,blah, blah, you're going up.So like, do that four times,I think that's a good lasagna.- For me, the answer's three.- I would probably go four to five layers.And there's no hard numberon that, it's pretty muchwhat fits in your pan.- I've even seen like,the 24 layer lasagnas,the 100 layer lasagnas.- Pretend you're from Chicago,make a deep dish lasagna.- If you can do five, that's better;if you can do six, that's even better;if you can do seven.[kissing fingertips]- So my traditional layeringmethod is bed of sauce.- Bed of sauce.- Sauce on the bottom.- Definitely sauce on the bottom.- Noodles then the ricotta cheese mixture,layer of spinach leaves for the greenand then on top of that meat sauceand then repeat.- Pasta, sauce, cheese, pasta,sauce, cheese, pasta, sauce.- Pasta, sauce, cheese or bechamel,grated cheese or bechamel,another layer of pasta.Keep on stacking thatup and then on the top,you want to make sure youput a nice layer of sauceso everything doesn't dry out.- One thing that's reallygood is if you sneak ina layer of prosciutto,just kind of just sneak it in.- Ooh, it's a two part question.- If I want to make lasagnabut don't have pasta to hand,so I have to replacethem with bread slices.- What changes do I needto make a proper lasagnawith bread slices?Get the [beep] out of here!- Prison lasagna is made withbed sheets and bread slices.- Who would eat that?- That's impossible, there's no,it would not be a proper lasagna.- I guess what I woulddo is I would make surethe bread was really toastyor compact so it didn'tsoak up a lot of liquidand become soggy.- My mind's racing here 'cause I thinkif you only have bread slices,then you could toast themand dehydrate them andlayer them with sauce,ragu, cheese, bechamel.That could be really delicious.- You know what I would do,I would toast your bread,add a little sauce, add a little cheeseand make an individual portion.- That upset me.Next question.- Oh my gosh, is my mom a criminal--Oh my God.- Is my mom a criminal by puttingpickles in the meat sauce?[record scratch]- Yeah.- Yes your mom needs to be arrestedand put in jail for that.- Oh my God, I have two wordsfor you: citizen's arrest!- Absolutely, pickles donot belong in meat sauce.- I'm sure your mom is not a criminal.If you like it and yourmom likes it, go for it.- Hmm, what is the differencebetween lasagna noodles--- And pasta sheets?- I'm gonna say the curly edges.- I'm not sure whatpurpose the frills serve,it's just maybe decorativebut when I think of pasta sheets,I think of the no boil stuffwhereas lasagna noodlesusually you have to boil beforeyou put them into the pan.- There is an in-between here.You can get no boilsheets of lasagna noodles,they're usually completely flat,they don't have rippled edgesand those can just belayered right in lasagnawithout boiling them first.- When I did my lasagna video,I just boiled some fresh pasta sheets.There's a lot of pasta in themarket that's no boil pastas.They're perfectly acceptable for thisbut for my lasagna, I'mgonna make fresh pasta.Everyone thinks pasta's thiscomplicated thing, it's not.I think you can use them interchangeably.- Oh, did you see that?How do I prevent the super dry pieces of--- Pasta on the edges of my lasagna?- Mine always comes out reallyhard and dry on the edges.- Some people really likethose crunchy, dry edges.- I like the hard, dry edges.If you don't want those crispy edges,you can cover with foiland maybe just uncover ittowards the end, so you don't getthose nice hard crispy pieces.- If you want to make themsofter, you add more sauce.Bring sauce all the wayout to the edge of your panand you can cover it with cheeseand that should really do the trick.- OK.- Sometimes when I make lasagna,the ragu results in so much red oil--- Both in and on top of the lasagna.- Is there any way to reduce thator am I doing something wrong?- I don't think you'redoing something wrong,I think a good ragu shouldhave a layer of oil.- The first thing I would do islook at the type of beef you're using.Look at the fat content.Are you buying 80/20,which is 80% lean, 20% fat?Are you using a higher ratio of fat?You want to cut down on the fat side,so you want to get aleaner meat, basically.- If it's really, really too oilywhen you take it out of the oven,here's where some bread can come in handy.Just sop the oil with alittle bit of the bread.Don't use a paper towel, use some bread.- Chill, if you chill it properlyand put it in the fridge over the night,a lot of that fat you can just peel offbecause it's a lot ofanimal fat, it'll solidifyand you should be able to peel it off.- I personally don't mindit, I think it's flavor.Yeah I mean, I could use a little fat, so.- I'd love to know how youadd things like vegetables--- To lasagna without them going mushy--- Or ruining the texture.- Don't add vegetables.- What are you gonnaput, cabbage in there?Nah, I don't think so.- I put baby spinach leaves in my lasagna.I just use these baby spinach leavesand it's really easy because it's a leaf,so it's just gonna cook a little bit more.- Spinach works really well,collards work really well.- If you gotta have vegetables,do something like zucchini,yellow squash.- And slice it lenghthwiseand salt it for a little bit firstand that really drawsout some of the moisturefrom that vegetable.- Quickly like flash boilor parboil your vegetablesand then that's allyou're gonna do with themand then layer them down.- You can use the zucchini inplace of noodles if you wantor you can just add it as a layer too.- I would think about what areyou doing to the vegetablesbefore you put them into the lasagna.Are you cooking the vegetables first?Because if you're cooking them first,then you should just cookthem a little bit lessand they'll retain more textureas they cook in the oven.- The other thing is you can bakethe lasagna uncovered a little bit longerso that the water can evaporateand it's not gonna remainin the lasagna pan if you have it covered.If I don't have ricotta--- What other cheesecould I use for lasagna?- Ooh.That's a tough one, Imean I always use ricotta.- When I did my lasagna inthe video I used a bechamel,which is a sauce made outof butter, flour and milk.We're gonna add someflour, whisk my warm milkand it makes this beautifulkind of creamy layerin our lasagna.- I know some peopledo the bechamel sauce,which I don't like todo because it's like,flour and butter and alot of stuff in there.- I'm going to recommendmaking a bechamel saucelike Frank did and that'sa traditional thing to usewhen you're making lasagna anyway.- In fact it might be moreclassic to use bechamelthan ricotta, so yeah.Screw ricotta, you don't need it.- You can use cheddar,you can use Gruyere.- I like pecorino, I'llalways be a fan of pecorino,it's a little sharper.- I would not use blue cheesebecause you're not a maniac.- You probably don't want to hear thisbut you could use tofu.- You can use whatever you wantbut if you really want that creaminess,substitute cottage cheesefor ricotta cheese.- How do I make lasagna without an oven?- Ah, that's a little bit hard.- I have no idea, you don't.[bell ringing]- I think a lot of peoplewould tell you you can't,you're screwed, no lasagna for youbut that's not true.You can actually makelasagna in the microwave.There is a recipe on oursite for microwave lasagnaand it surprisingly worksreally, really well.- You're not gonna havethat nice brown cheeseand you're not gonna havethat crunchy, crispy qualitywhen you do that.- You just won't get that kindof like, nice roasted flavorthat you get when you puta lasagna in the oven.You could probably justput it in a saute panand layer everything.Put it on medium to low heat.- So, that's it.Are these real?I'm just kidding.- How do you make vegan lasagna?- Oh here we go again.I'm not vegan, I know there area lot of vegan substitutes for things.I guess it's just buyingingredients that are vegan,cutting out the meat and praying to Godthat it tastes good.- Gross!Vegan question!- If you wanna use pasta, readthe label on the pasta box.- Most lasagna that you buy like thisis probably vegan already.- Commercially dried pastatends to be just semolinaor a hard durum wheat with water.You can try using a nutmilk or a plant-based milkto do the bechamel.- Easiest thing to do wouldjust be to get vegan cheeseand there's a lot of that out there nowand it's not bad.You could use soft silken tofu, whisk thatand use that as kindof your ricotta layer.I think that would be decent.- And then you can also doa little bit of a breadcrumb on top.- And don't have me over for that, right.I want meat.OK!Last but not least.- What are some ingredientswe could use to--- Elevate the lasagna?- Truffles, spices, et cetera.- Please don't puttruffle in your lasagna.- Well truffles is a really good start.I would use them sparinglybecause they havesuch a pronounced and persistent taste.- I probably would stayaway from truffles,just because there's so manyother flavors going on there.Use some good meat with this.This tough piece of meatneeds some time to break down.What I did in my lasagna,I did a short rib.It's a really nice piece of meat.- Add some cured meat to your lasagna,like thinly sliced,very thinly sliced prosciutto or jamonor even something likemortadella could be really good.- Buy better tomatoes,use better olive oil,get the good cheese.- Well truffles, that's a Frank question.But I like to experiment with spices,I like to kick it up a notchwith a couple of things.- You could put any spiceinto your tomato sauce,I mean you could do tomatosauce with fennel seeds,you could make it veryspicy, you could make it,you could throw chillisinto your tomato sauce.- I like to use a mixture of ground beefand hot Italian sausageand maybe a little vealfor my meat part.Sometimes I will putdifferent kinds of mushroomslike mixes of wildmushrooms, not truffles,'cause I don't have a truffle budget.But I really have a nicewild mushroom budget,that kicks it up a notch.We're out of questions!- And that's everything.- Everything.- There is to know--- OK, maybe like 10%.It's my way to make it, Idon't care about how you do it,just have fun.