The Most Time-Efficient Way To Assemble The Perfect Lasagna

Lasagna can seem like a big undertaking, but it's also one with big rewards. For starters, it's a comforting combination of pasta, sauce, cheese, and often meat, so even when it isn't perfect, it's still pretty great. It's also typically made in a large format, so all that hard work pays dividends into the future, whether you're a béchamel fanatic or a ricotta devotee. And you can maximize efficiency making it even before lasagna baking day comes around by using these time-saving tips.

Dairy aside, lasagna ingredients are subject to all manner of switcheroos, personal preferences, and family recipe quirks. But tomato sauce, or "gravy," and noodles are all but guaranteed. If you've already got efficiency on the brain, don't even think about making the latter from scratch: That's a project better left for vacation days or retirement. Store-bought is more than fine in this case, and you should lose the illusion that lasagna noodles simply must be boiled before assembling. Maybe that's how grandma always did it, but maybe she actually was retired. When submerged in the sauce, everyday, packaged lasagna noodles will cook just fine in the oven. 

This next suggestion may take a little getting used to, but each time you make said sauce, prepare extra for the next use. Meaning, if you're whipping up a fresh sauce for lasagna today, double it so you'll have some ready in the freezer that can be thawed for a theoretical "tomorrow," even if that's two months from now. A basic, all-purpose tomato sauce can take as little as 20 minutes to make in either case.

If you keep a pack of ground beef in the freezer alongside your rainy day sauce and pasta in the cupboard, you almost have enough ingredients on hand to execute a pretty good pantry lasagna. But you will need to pick up cheese like ricotta closer to its intended use date. Ricotta's high moisture content turns to ice in the freezer, causing a notably disintegrated texture once you thaw it out. For its part and for those who prefer it, a béchamel comes together in around 10 minutes, so you might actually waste time if you try to make it ahrad, cool, remove to another container to refrigerate, and ultimately wash said otherwise unsullied container. So provided you also have the mother sauce's required butter, flour, and milk in supply, you might still save that trip to the market after all.

Once it's made, whichever way, you want to properly store your hard-won lasagna and stave off doing all of this preparation arithmetic again for as long as possible. Frozen homemade lasagna stays tasty in the freezer for about three months. And, when it comes time to enjoy it again, the best way to reheat lasagna is in the oven.