On my daughters recommendation I decided to fix crockpot lasagna! She had told me it was easy and delicious. It has been years since I have made lasagna from scratch, (although this really doesn’t qualify for scratch). So I decided to give it a try.
The recipe I used a recipe, came from faithful provisions but I made some slight changes along with 1/2ing the recipe. (It still made for several leftovers). Yummy nonetheless!
Be sure to give it a try because it really is easy and nice to come home to a wonderful smelling home from a long days work.
Ingredients
- 5 lasagna noodles, uncooked (I used Barilla)
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 1 tsp. Italian Seasoning
- 1-28 oz. jars spaghetti sauce
- 1/4 cup water
- 4 oz. can sliced mushrooms
- 6 oz. ricotta cheese
- 1 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- Break noodles.
- Place half in bottom of greased slow cooker.
- Brown ground beef in sauce pan, drain, stir in Italian seasoning.
- Spread half over noodles in slow cooker.
- Layer half of sauce and water, half of mushrooms, half of ricotta cheese, and half of mozzarella cheese over beef.
- Repeat layers with remaining half of ingredients.
- Cover, cook on low 3-5 hours.
http://faithfulprovisions.com/2009/03/11/cooking-101-slow-cooker-lasagna/
Tips for cooking lasagna in your crock pot:
- Use 2 jars spaghetti sauce. Be sure to put plenty on the top and sides
- Ricotta can be substituted. If you don’t have any ricotta cheese, use cottage cheese or cream cheese. I substituted one brick of cream cheese. It tasted just like ricotta. I just diced it up and spread the dollups all around.
- Lasagna noodles can be substituted. You may use bowtie or penne and make it like a baked ziti. (Use what you have!)
- Grease the whole cooker. I forgot this step the first time I tried this, and it was sticking like crazy!
- Adjust the cook time. With my slow cooker, 5 hours was WAY too long. I could easily put it on low for 3 hours and it does just fine. It depends on your cooker, but remember, for this recipe, all it is doing is cooking the noodles.
