I tried making lasagne in the slow cooker yesterday. I have no idea why I never did this before, but it is how I will be making it from now on. It came out great!
I made it as I always do, but instead of putting a few layers in a baking dish and cooking in the oven, I made more layers in the crock, put the lid on, turned it on high, let it cook for 4 hours, then took the lid off and let it sit for 25 minutes or so before cutting. I had to use a cheddar/mozzarella blend because there was no plain mozzarella in Aldi when we did our weekly shop.
I stopped cooking lasagne noodles years ago--same with manicotti, large shells, etc--they cook while the dish is baking so there is no need to cook them beforehand. Same with the slow cooker. I broke the lasagne sheets so they'd fit better in the oval crock, but didn't pre-cook them. We don't like meat in our lasagne, but if I was using it, I could cook it first.
I'm so glad I tried this. I'm pretty happy about the leftovers, too. 😋😉
12 comments:
That looks so delicious, I'm sure I can almost smell the wonderful cooking aroma too!
Enjoy ... I think you will :)
All the best Jan
It is really good! :-)
That looks amazingly good! I've never made lasagna in my slow cooker but I am going to as soon as I get the ingredients, and I'll be using hamburger.
I am glad I tried it :-) It was a trial run for the Christmas Eve lasagne that we have every year.
I cook my lasagna without cooking the noodles first also. It is too much of a hassle to cook them first. It always comes out just fine without doing so and is much easier. I'll have to try making it in the crockpot, it sounds even easier.
I don't know why I didn't try this sooner! 🙂😋
Recipe maybe? I have not cooked my noodles in years...as a vegetarian of 30 years...I don't use meat. Have never made in crock pot...sounds easy and yummy.
I make it really simple, layering noodles, sauce, mozzarella, and either cottage cheese or ricotta. I have sometimes thought about adding various veggies, but Bill really likes it this way, so I leave it like this. We usually only have it two or three times a year--not sure why! To make the sauce, I use what is called passata here--it's the thickness of tomato puree in the US. I thicken it with what would be tomato paste in the US and add garlic, oregano, basil, and sometimes parsley. Or I have sometimes used Italian herb blend. Could also use tomato paste thinned with water, if that's what's on hand :-) If one used sauce in a jar, the herbs wouldn't be needed.
I'm glad I tried it this way. :-)
These kinds of discoveries are really cool. I use the Instant Pot but I always cook things in advance so it's just a matter of sort of letting things 'heat up' together. The noodles don't take long and whatever else you put it can be pre-steamed if you want to cut down on time. It's nice that can be done either way regardless of what sort of cooker it is. The pressure cookers have been upgraded now to include AF lids so that the tops of things can be more crusty. The recipe's are quick, made with the regular pressure lid and then switched for 5-10 mins with the Air Fryer Lid so things can be broiled/roasted right in the pot they were cooked in. Once I move I'll probably expand that. I've always thought in-pot casseroles made more sense so this just takes it to that next level. (I have an air fryer already tho so if i wanted to roast/broil it by portion that would be easy enough.) I have a friend who uses zucchini instead of noodles to speed things up and they grow huge a good part of the year, it all works =)
The microwave here has a grill in it, which I had never heard of and have never used, but I watched a video once of some guy using his. I think I'd rather just use my mini-oven, but I can see where it would be handy for people.
I have always just used my slow cooker to cook stuff overnight, but I will expand my use of it, perhaps. I will certainly use it for lasagne and for the Thanksgiving 'stuffing.' That's our favourite part :-) It should be great for that.
An example of pre-cooking with the IP is that often people would put the noodles in with the water on the bottom with a trivet of some sort like an egg cooker that you see these days for boiling and on top of that a steamer basket so the veg or whatever can be pre-steamed and it's done all together for whatever period of time. In the IP it's about 3 minutes no matter how full the pot so I imagine 10-15 mins for the lasagna noodles/mixed veg or whatever on a regular stove to speed it up a bit if one was thinking about it. I stack loads of things to cook together including potatoes in the steamer in the IP since it's 3 mins regardless. "Stacking Meal Prep" is sort of a thing in this sort of cooking, there can be loads of different parts of a meal going at once. They have those flan pans that some people put in as well and that can be where something more could be like a flan or a custard or even a fish dish etc (surprisingly it doesn't mingle flavors). I love how that cuts down on dishes and streamlines cooking so much. It can be done in any way not just with an IP. That's so interesting about the microwave I haven't heard of that either. PS: Hey didn't you guys grow something in a garden space this summer or was that my imagination?
Nope, no garden here. In 2019, I did some container gardening, but there's no place to do that here and with the pandemic, no community garden activities took place. TBH, the community garden space looks ragged, so not sure when it was last in operation anyway.
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