Recipe - Beef and Spinach Lasagna

Operation: VDay Night Lasagna was a success! Instead of dealing with a crowded restaurant on Valentine's Day night, the boyfriend and I decided to just stay in and make lasagna. I made spinach lasagna months ago for Father's Day and he loved it, but had mentioned that it would be good to try again with meat this time for more protein -- more flavor, more filling. I searched down a recipe and found this one: Beef and spinach lasagna @ Food Mayhem.

So yesterday after work I headed to HEB, picked up the ingredients (along with some hand dipped chocolate covered strawberries, made right in front of me - yum!), and headed home. Even got the boyfriend to help me cook! Always a plus.

So here is the recipe, with my additions/deletions in red. And some pictures.

Beef and Spinach Lasagna
Makes one 9×13 tray

Meat Sauce

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 cup chopped onion (I didn't measure the chopped onion - I just bought a medium sized yellow onion and chopped it into small chunks. It was probably about 1 1/2 cups - 2 cups)
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste (I bought a tiny can of it and didn't know what to do with it after, so we used about 2 tablespoons)
• 1 pound 11 ounces (90% lean) ground beef
• 1 (28oz) can crushed tomato with basil (Bought Hunt's brand with basil and garlic)
• 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• Small tub of sliced white mushrooms (I forgot to look at the ounce size of the package -- usually I've only seen it in one large size, but HEB had two sizes - the regular and about half of that)
• Handful of finely chopped fresh basil (I saw it in the store and figured, since the sauce has basil in it, why not more basil? Yum.)
• 1 bay leaf (Didn't use it -- didn't feel like digging it out of the sauce at the end)

Cheese & Spinach Filling

• 10 ounces frozen spinach, blanched, drained and cooled
• 1 pound shredded whole milk mozzarella, divided
• 1 pound whole milk ricotta

Assembly

• 9×13 baking dish
• 1 box lasagna sheets (I bought the oven-ready type. I think either will work - last time the ones I used didn't specify oven-ready, and did have boiling instructions on the back.) 

Instructions -

Meat Sauce (can be made a day or two ahead and refrigerated, warm before using):

1. Heat oil in a medium pot on medium high heat. Stir in onions and garlic and soften for about a minute. Add carrots and stir around for another minute. Stir in tomato paste until well distributed.
2. Add ground beef and stir around until browned, about 5 minutes.
3. Add crushed tomatoes, mushrooms, and basil, garlic, and bay leaf. Bring to boil. Stir and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Remove from heat and remove bay leaf. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F while meat sauce cools a bit.

Meat sauce after simmering (lol, so hot it fogged up my phone's camera lens)

Cheese & Spinach Filling:

1. Ring out spinach with paper towels.
2. In a medium sized bowl , combine spinach, 8 ounces of mozzarella, and ricotta.

Spinach and cheese mixture, yum!

Assembly

1. Spread 1 cup of meat sauce on the bottom of the pan.
2. Lay 4 sheets (or 3 if using the regular size) of lasagna down.
3. Spread 1/3 of cheese and spinach filling on top of lasagna sheets. Spread a little more than 1 cup of meat sauce on top.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 two more times. Lay another layer of lasagna sheets on top. Cover with remaining meat sauce. Spread remaining mozzarella on top.
(We didn't end up with many layers. Ours was as follows: meat sauce on bottom, noodles, all of the spinach/cheese mixture, most of the rest of the meat sauce, noodles, final bits of meat sauce/liquid to wet the noodles, cover with cheese. My pan isn't very deep so I didn't think we could do all the layers. It turned out fine.)
5. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 40 minutes. Remove aluminum foil and bake for another 5 minutes. Serve.

Bottom layer of meat I believe.

All covered in cheese, ready to bake!

Side view, pre-baking.

Fresh from the oven!

My (first) slice!

The boyfriend's first slice!

After slicing into it

Look at those leftovers!

This keeps well in the fridge and freezes well. You can reheat piece by piece in the microwave. It’s a really awesome dish to have sitting in the fridge.