Friday, June 26, 2009

Spinach Lasagna in a crock pot

I will admit that I am one lazy cook. Its hard to imagine that I used to cook for a living, but that was a looong time ago. I started looking around online for a lasagna recipe that could be done in a crock pot~my favorite way to cook. I found a recipe that looked pretty good, but it was a meat recipe. I really wanted a meatless lasagna, so after a few tries tweaking the original recipe I came up with this one. You might need to tweak this recipe a couple of times to get it right for you. The noodles do not get cooked for this recipe, the crock pot doesn't heat up the house (nice during the summertime swelter of Tennessee) and there are leftovers for the next day or two. Three things that make this recipe one of my favorites.

Here's my way and what you need:

~About 40 ounces of spaghetti sauce. I found a sauce I like in a 27 ounce can and I use 1 1/2 cans per lasagna, freezing the other half can for the next batch. I like a saucy lasagna...
~1/3 cup water
~8 uncooked lasagna noodles
~15 ounce container ricotta cheese, whole or low fat, doesn't matter
~2 eggs lightly beaten
~4 cups mozzarella (at least 4 cups, add more if you'd like)
~1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
~10 ounce package frozen chopped spinach-thawed and squeezed of all water

Combine sauce and water, set aside

Cheese mixture: combine ricotta cheese, beaten eggs, 3 cups mozzarella, 1/4 cup Parmesan and spinach, mix well.

Lightly oil bottom and sides of crockpot. Spread about 3/4 cup sauce in bottom of pot. Take 4 lasagna noodles and break into 2-3 inch pieces. Place noodles on sauce layer.

Spread all of the cheese mixture on top of the first layer of noodles. Spread another 3/4 cup of sauce on top of cheese mixture.

Break the remaining 4 noodles into pieces and layer on top of the second sauce layer. Dump the remainder of the sauce on top of the second noodle layer. Top with the remaining cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of Parmesan.

Turn crock pot to high for 1 hour.
After one hour turn crock pot to low for an additional 2 1/2-3 hours-depending on how fast your pot cooks. After cooking complete, allow to sit an additional 1/2 hour covered before serving. This 1/2 hour allows the lasagna to set up a little bit better. Enjoy!

1 comment:

Celtic Cat said...

Yummm! I have been thinking about Lasagna lately.

Thanks for the tip on the crock pot!