pub/school dinner style lasagne

nublue

Hi,

Does anyone have a recipe for the sort of lasagne you tend to get in pubs? By that I mean the kind that is meaty and greasy (in a nice way!) and not very tomatoey, with very little sauce! they are usually quite deep too...

I can't stand sloppy tomatoey ready meal style lasagne, but love the other kind, unfortunatley every recipe i try seems to be for the sloppy kind ...

Thanks!

gizmo111

Haven't had a pub lasagne for years - nut I would suggest you just brown mice, mix in some onions garlic and mushrooms that have been lightly freid in butter and then add tin of chopped tomatoes or packet of passatta, oxo cube, teaspoon of marmite, black pepper slug of red wine if available and leave to simmer for a while, if it seems to watery then add some flour to thicken. make up lasagne with thickish cheese sauce.
Ready meals are horrible!

Pink.

Hi nueblue,

I don't think I've ever had pub or school dinner style lasagne but I make homemade lasange from scratch and it's meaty and not sloppy at all.

This is how I do it:

Make a bolognese sauce -

Dry fry the mince, (no oil or butter because the meat will produce it's own fat) and add in a chopped onion and a couple of crushed garlic cloves, until the meat is browned.

Add sliced mushrooms and continue to cook for a few minutes.

Stir in mixed herbs and/or basil, black pepper, finely sliced bell peppers (whatever colour you have), tinned tomatoes or passata, stock cube and a good glug of red wine.

Simmer gently until you have a rich, thick sauce. Taste and add more seasoning if you think it needs it. You can add in a dollop of tomato puree if you want to.

Make a white/bechamel sauce or if you like your lasagne quite cheesy, a cheese sauce in a separate saucepan.

Once the bolognese and bechamel sauce are ready you can begin to layer up your lasagne.

Put some of the liquid from the bolognese sauce into the bottom of your dish.

On top of that place the lasagne sheets to cover the base of the dish.

Spoon some about a third of the bolognese sauce over the top of the pasta sheets and spread to cover.

Top with bechamel/cheese sauce. Use the back of a spoon to spread it over the bolognese.

Then add more lasagne sheets and repeat the bolognese, white sauce, pasta layers until the dish is almost full. Try to finish with a layer of white/cheese sauce.

Sprinkle the finished dish with lots of grated cheese and bake in the oven (180 degrees for about 40 mins or until the pasta is cooked and the top is beginning to crisp and brown.

Lasagne is very easy to make but because the sauces are made separately it seems to create so many dishes that the washing up drives me mad. Saying that, it's very hard to beat a homemade lasagne and leftovers can be cooled, cut and frozen in portions for future 'ready' meals.

This thread has many more recipes that may help:

Lasagne recipe?

I'll add your thread to that one later to keep the recipes together.

Pink

dogstarheaven

hi pink-winged or anyone else!

i've given up on using packet lasagne sheets as i've always found them partially cooked. i do follow the instructions on the packet but it never turns out soft and palatable. what am i doing wrong? are the sauces too thick that the sheets aren't cooking properly or are you meant to rehydrate the sheets first (which i've tried many a time, but they always stick together!). thesedays, i always use fresh sheets, but there's always a few left over which is then wasted, whereas using the dried variety, it would make sense to use what you actually need.

5dogs

Hi DSH

I had the same problem, dry lasagna sheets not 'cooking through'.

What I do now is to leave the 'meaty' type sauce a little on the runny side, and cook the lasagna on a slightly lower temp but for a little longer.

The dry pasta sheets seem to need the extra moisture in the sauce, as it soaks into them and softens the pasta.

HTH

flea72

nublue wrote: »

Does anyone have a recipe for the sort of lasagne you tend to get in pubs?

i think in processed lasagne, they puree the bolognese sauce, rather than leaving it homemade lumpy, and this is what gives it a smoother/more greasy texture

they also have thinner layers, so you end up with more pasta than sauce - whereas when doing homemade, im bored with layering by the time ive hit 2-3 layers, so usually its more sauce than pasta

dogstarheaven wrote: »

thesedays, i always use fresh sheets, but there's always a few left over which is then wasted, whereas using the dried variety, it would make sense to use what you actually need.

i buy fresh lasagne and 'open freeze' the leftovers

F

purpleivy

gizmo111 wrote: »

Haven't had a pub lasagne for years - nut I would suggest you just brown mice, mix in some onions garlic and mushrooms that have been lightly freid in butter and then add tin of chopped tomatoes or packet of passatta, oxo cube, teaspoon of marmite, black pepper slug of red wine if available and leave to simmer for a while, if it seems to watery then add some flour to thicken. make up lasagne with thickish cheese sauce.
Ready meals are horrible!

:eek:Brown Mice? :eek: is that how they make pub lasagne?:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

cyclingyorkie

gizmo111 wrote: »

Haven't had a pub lasagne for years - nut I would suggest you just brown mice,

i've never made lasagne............but i didn't know you put mice in it!:eek::eek::eek:

timmmers

one reason that catered food like this isn't runny...the area of the container they cook them in is larger than most of us would use so the moisture loss is more. Another is that it's usually frozen.

t

nublue

Hi all,

Thanks for all of the advice!!! I am going to make one this weekend and let you all know how it went...great tip about using fresh lasagne sheets, but what does "open freezing" mean?

timmers - perhaps I should freeze it first then reheat it?


Think I'll go for mince rather than mice though

My tummy is rumbling just thinking about it!

Thanks

Icey77

If yu mke your lasange and let it cool and then reheat the next day it will be much firmer and far less runny. Also the flavours will have developed

I always make lasagne the day before - good luck!