Homemade Lasagna is a family favorite and a great way to feed a crowd.
In this classic lasagna recipe, sheets of pasta are layered with a cheesy filling, a rich meaty tomato sauce, and more cheese and then baked until bubbly and browned.
While there are a few steps, this lasagna recipe is relatively easy to make and has so much flavor.
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This Is Our Go-To Lasagna Recipe Because…
- This recipe has been called the best by many and has thousands of 5-star reviews!
- It uses simple ingredients that you likely have on hand, and it packs big flavor!
- This is an easy lasagna recipe. It requires just one pan, one bowl, and a 9×13 baking dish.
- It reheats well and can be made ahead of time. You can freeze lasagna either before or after baking.
Lasagna Ingredients
- Cheese Filling: For this classic lasagna recipe, the cheese filling has ricotta and parmesan with seasonings. You can make homemade ricotta cheese or replace it with cottage cheese.
- Meat: I use both Italian sausage and ground beef for great flavor. If using all beef, add ¼ teaspoon of fennel seeds and some Italian seasoning to the meat mixture for flavor, or make my homemade Italian sausage.
- Sauce: To keep this sauce quick, I use pasta sauce or marinara sauce (it’s easy to make from scratch with crushed tomatoes and canned tomatoes if you’d prefer). If using store-bought sauce, I love Rao’s for flavor.
Spinach (variation): Spinach is optional but delicious in lasagna. For spinach lasagna, thaw 10oz of frozen spinach, squeeze out the moisture, and add it along with the cheese layer.
How to Make Lasagna
While homemade lasagna may have a few steps, each step is easy – and I assure you it’s worth the time; the perfect Italian meal!
- Boil pasta: In a large pot of salted water boil lasagna noodles per the recipe below.
- Prepare meat sauce: Cook sausage and beef with onion and garlic. Drain well, add the pasta sauce (I love this brand) & simmer it for a few minutes to thicken.
- Combine cheese mixture: Stir the cheese mixture together in a bowl.
- Layer & bake: Layer the meat sauce and cheese mixture with lasagna noodles and bake until the top of the lasagna is golden brown.
How to Layer Lasagna
- Spread about a cup of meat sauce into a 9×13 pan. Add a layer of noodles.
- Top the noodles with some of the ricotta cheese mixture. Repeat the layers, ending with a layer of noodles and sauce
- Cover with foil and bake. Remove foil, top with mozzarella and parmesan, and bake for another 15 minutes.
Once you have prepared the meat sauce and the cheese mixture, you’re ready to layer. This is the order of layers:
- sauce – noodles – cheese
- sauce – noodles – cheese
- sauce – noodles – cheese
- noodles – sauce (bake) – cheese
Serve with a big slice of homemade Garlic Bread and garnish with fresh basil or a couple of tablespoons of parsley. Finish the meal with a Caesar salad or Italian salad.
Holly’s Tips for the Best Lasagna
Here are my tips to ensure this is the best lasagna recipe you’ve ever had!
- Choose a quality pasta sauce.
- Bake this lasagna recipe for one hour.
- Cover it with aluminum foil for most of the cooking time so it doesn’t dry out.
- Add the cheese during the last 15 minutes of cooking so it becomes browned and bubbly.
- Let it rest at least 15 minutes before cutting.
Make Ahead
Lasagna can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated for up to 2 days before baking. It can also be frozen before or after baking.
To Freeze Lasagna
Lasagna is one of the best meals to make ahead and freeze. Double or triple the recipe and store it tightly wrapped in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Thaw in the refrigerator overnight and bake as directed. If the lasagna is cold from the fridge, it may need an extra 20 minutes or so of cooking time.
How To Reheat Lasagna
If you’ve frozen leftovers, pop them in the oven at 350°F covered until reheated. This should take about 30 minutes! Of course, leftovers are perfectly heated in the microwave too!
More Baked Pasta Recipes
Did you enjoy this Homemade Lasagna? Be sure to leave a rating and a comment below!
Ingredients
- 12 lasagna noodles uncooked
- 2 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- ¼ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Tomato Sauce
- ½ pound lean ground beef
- ½ pound Italian sausage
- 1 yellow onion diced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 36 ounces pasta sauce *see note
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- ½ teaspoon salt more to taste
Cheese Mixture
- 2 cups ricotta cheese or cottage cheese
- ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
- 1 large egg beaten
- 1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- ¼ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the lasagna noodles and cook until al dente (firm) according to package directions. Drain, rinse under cold water, and set aside.
- Meanwhile, in a large skillet or Dutch oven, brown the beef, sausage, onion, and garlic over medium-high heat until no pink remains. Drain any fat.
- Stir in the pasta sauce, tomato paste, Italian seasoning, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper. Simmer uncovered over medium heat for 5 minutes or until slightly thickened. Taste and season with additional salt if desired.
- In a separate medium bowl, combine 1 ½ cups mozzarella cheese, ¼ cup parmesan cheese, ricotta, parsley, egg, and ¼ teaspoon salt.
- Spread 1 cup of the meat sauce in a 9×13 pan or casserole dish. Top it with 3 lasagna noodles. Layer with 1 cup of the ricotta cheese mixture and 1 cup of meat sauce. Repeat twice more. Finish with 3 noodles topped with remaining sauce.
- Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
- Remove the foil and sprinkle the top of the lasagna with 2 ½ cups mozzarella cheese and ¼ cup Parmesan cheese. Bake uncovered for an additional 15 minutes or until browned and bubbly. Broil for 2-3 minutes if desired.
- Rest for at least 15 minutes before cutting.
Video
Notes
- Ricotta cheese can be replaced with cottage cheese.
- Use all beef (or even ground turkey) in place of sausage if needed. If using all beef, add ½ teaspoon Italian seasoning to the meat (and ¼ teaspoon fennel seeds if desired).
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Casserole, Main Course, Pasta
Cuisine Italian© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
Easy and delicious!!
always comes out fantastic… I add spinach in the riccotta and sometimes a zucchini layer. Never any leftovers! Thanks for the easy recipe!
Amazing! I use your recipe every time we cook this!!
Very yummy recipe!! I have made it twice and it turned out great both times. I will say that I doubled the sauce and made half again as much cheese mixture (I think I’ll double that next time too as it was still hard to cover the layers with what I had). So as far as amounts for a 9 x 13 pan I think they are way off in this recipe. So, that’s kind of annoying, but the ingredients themselves make the lasagna turn out great. I do add a bit of crushed fennel and like the depth of flavor that adds (more traditional lasagna flavor to me) and I also added a zucchini, a bell pepper, and a couple cups of spinach to the sauce mixture, which was amazing! I think I’ll be looking for another recipe for better rations for next time if I can find a good one, but will probably use this recipe again as far as ingredients/flavor. :)
Delicious! The ONLY thing I did differently was that I made my own sauce, like I usually do (with unflavored canned tomato sauce, canned diced tomatoes, and my own selection of seasonings and spices), which I condensed down to perfection. Also, I only used ground beef, which I added just a bit of (slightly crushed) fennel to in order to give it that Italian sausage flare! Thanks for the recipe!
Tasty! Very easy to make!
Thanks Holly!!!!
Good, except for the meat combination. Why do people feel it necessary, or even appealing, to mix two different meats/animals? Is one meat not enough? You need two types of animal in your food? Yuck. I always use either burger or sausage, never both. I don’t find that having both pork and beef in the same dish adds flavor, in fact, I find it completely unnecessary and gross.
You can certainly use one type of meat or the other. We like the flavor of sausage but I do like to add beef to balance it out a bit so the flavor of the sausage is not too much and I also find sausage a bit more fatty so I like adding a lean beef. You could also use all beef but add in the seasonings we add to our homemade Italian sausage. So glad you enjoyed the recipe!
Imagine being so miserable to insult a stranger nice enough to share her amazing recipe. That’s what’s gross.
You are right! The “2 meat is gross” gal was a bit insulting. This recipe is very good just as written.
If I am substituting cottage cheese in for the ricotta, should I still mix in an egg or just do the cottage cheese?
You will still need to add the egg.
Loved this recipe , it was easy to follow and loved there was a video as well.
I made this and it was great! Are you able to add the remainder of the shredded cheese on top at the beginning rather than leaving it for the last 15 minutes of cook time?
Hi Janae, we wait to add the cheese until we remove the foil because it all tends to stick to the foil if added in the beginning and then you are left with minimal on your lasagna.
I have tried the Easy Lasagna recipe and the Hungarian Goulosh recipe and I and my family enjoyed them immensely. The recipes are easy to fallow. Thank you, Holly.
Perfect recipe! Turned out great. I just added some veggies as that’s how I like my lasagna. I used 36oz of tomato sauce then added one diced bell pepper, carrot, 2 celery stalks. To the ricotta mixture I added 2 cups baby spinach. The amounts were perfect. My family loved it.
Excellent recipe! The best lasagna Ive ever made, thank to the great and detailed instructions.
You know the lasagna is good, when the kid want to take the leftovers for his school lunch on the next day :) .
Thank you!
That is always a good sign. Glad they enjoyed it!
So Good. I Placed the noodles in a 13×9 pan, covered w/ boiling water & let rest for 30 min. Used 1 1/2 c of sauce for the layering.
From their first bite, the family could not stop praising how good this was.
Loved the recipe and thanks for the tip to rest the lasagna before cutting. I added at least 40 ounces of sauce, but feel it needed more.
So amazing. The whole family loves this one.
Recipe calls for 12 noodles…video uses 9. Recipe list calls for uncooked noodles…actual recipe says cook them…have not made it yet…will see how it goes.
Hi Gwen, we cook the noodles in the recipe. We list them as uncooked so you don’t use oven-ready noodles for this recipe. Also, all steps are not shown in the video to save time but we layer as follows: meat sauce to cover the bottom of the pan then noodles, cheese, meat, noodles, cheese, meat, noodles, cheese, meat, and lastly top with the final 3 noodles and any remaining sauce for 12 noodles in total. Some duplicate steps were not included to keep the video a reasonable length. Hope that helps.
So i can’t use the oven-ready noodles? My store doesn’t have sheet ready noodles. I ive in a tiny town. :-0
Hi Deanna, we have not tried this recipe with oven-ready noodles but other readers have had good results. Some use a little additional water, others some additional sauce to help them cook through. We would love to hear how it turns out for you.
This is delicious and so easy! It takes self control to resist digging into it straight out of the oven. Oh, and it’s definitely not 12 servings over here ;)
Thanks so much for the recipe. I just baked and haven’t tried it yet. One question, it says to put 1/3 cup of cheese mixture on each layer. I had a ton leftover. Am I reading something wrong?
Hi Sherry, we use ⅓ of the cheese mixture in each layer (not ⅓ cup) and do three layers in total. It should all be used up when you are done.