Classic Lasagna
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This classic lasagna recipe layers a rich Italian sausage and tomato sauce with creamy ricotta, gooey mozzarella, and tender pasta for one seriously delicious lasagna.
I love this classic lasagna recipe because it has all the cozy, familiar flavors of the lasagna I grew up on, but it tastes like something you’d get at a nice Italian restaurant. The Italian sausage makes the sauce especially rich and flavorful, and a little cream cheese makes the ricotta filling extra smooth and creamy. I also use oven-ready noodles, which save the trouble of boiling a big pot of pasta and have a delicate texture that’s surprisingly close to fresh homemade pasta.
The lasagna takes some time from start to finish, but none of the steps are difficult, and you can assemble the whole thing ahead of time. It freezes beautifully, too.
“Best lasagna recipe—ever! Served with your fab Caesar salad. Conversation at the table was reduced to sighs of delight and an occasional OMG or YUM.”
What You’ll Need To Make Lasagna
- Onion, Garlic, Carrots & Celery: These aromatic vegetables form the base of the sauce, adding sweetness, savoriness, and depth of flavor.
- Italian Sausage: Adds richness and bold flavor. You can substitute ground beef—just amp up the garlic and Italian seasoning to compensate.
- Crushed Tomatoes, Red Wine & Heavy Cream: The tomatoes provide body and tang, the wine deepens the flavor, and the cream rounds it all out for a rich, well-balanced sauce.
- Ricotta, Cream Cheese, Egg & Parmigiano-Reggiano: These combine for a creamy, flavorful filling that bakes up smooth and rich (the cream cheese keeps the ricotta from getting grainy, and the egg helps it set).
- Oven-Ready (No-Boil) Lasagna Noodles: No need to pre-cook—these absorb the sauce as they bake. I like the Barilla brand best.
- Mozzarella: Melts into gooey, cheesy layers throughout the dish. Pre-shredded is fine—just go for whole milk for the best melt.
- Jump to the printable recipe for precise measurements
How To Make Lasagna
Prep the vegetables: Add the onion, garlic, carrots, and celery to a food processor and pulse until very finely minced, but not puréed. Taking the vegetables down this small helps them practically melt into the sauce. If you don’t have a food processor, it’s fine to chop by hand.
Brown the sausage: Cook the sausage in olive oil, breaking it up as you go, until lightly browned but not cooked all the way through. Transfer it to a plate. Don’t worry about getting it fully cooked at this point—it will finish cooking in the sauce.
Cook the vegetables: Add the minced vegetables to the same pot and cook until very soft, stirring frequently. You’re looking for them to soften without taking on much color.
Add the wine: Pour in the wine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Continue cooking until most of the wine has been absorbed by the vegetables.
Simmer the sauce: Add the tomatoes, cream, and seasonings and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the sauce thickens.
Add the sausage: Chop the browned sausage into smaller pieces—large chunks can make the lasagna harder to layer and slice neatly—and return to the pot. Continue simmering until it’s cooked through and the flavors come together. Remove the bay leaves before assembling the lasagna.
Make the ricotta filling: Process the ricotta, cream cheese, egg, garlic, Parmesan, salt, and pepper until smooth and evenly combined. Add the basil and pulse just until finely chopped. Processing the mixture gives the filling an especially smooth, creamy texture.
Assemble the lasagna: Spread a layer of sauce over the bottom of the baking dish, then add the noodles, leaving a little space between them—they’ll expand as they cook. Layer with the ricotta filling, mozzarella, and more sauce, repeating until everything is used up and finishing with sauce and cheese on top. Be sure the top noodles are covered with sauce so they have enough moisture to cook properly.
Bake: Cover the dish tightly with foil and bake until the lasagna is hot and bubbling. Remove the foil and continue baking at the higher temperature until the noodles are tender and the top and edges are golden and puffed. Give the lasagna about 15 minutes to rest before cutting into it. This gives the layers time to settle and makes it much easier to slice and serve.
Video Tutorial
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Classic Lasagna
Ingredients
For the Sauce
- 1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
- 5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 2 medium carrots, roughly chopped
- 1 stalk celery, roughly chopped
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 1½ pounds Italian sausage (bulk or removed from casing)
- ¾ cup dry red wine
- 1 (28-oz) can crushed tomatoes
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1½ teaspoons dried thyme
- 2 bay leaves
For the Ricotta Mixture
- 1 (15-oz) container whole milk ricotta (about 1¾ cups)
- 3 oz cream cheese
- 1 large egg
- 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
- ¾ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup roughly chopped fresh basil
For Assembling
- 12 oven ready, no boil lasagna noodles (such as Barilla)
- 16 oz shredded whole milk mozzarella cheese
- ¼ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Instructions
For the Sauce
- Place the onions, garlic, carrot and celery in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade; pulse until finely minced but not puréed.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the sausage into the pan and cook, stirring occasionally and breaking the sausage into small pieces, until slightly browned but not cooked all the way through, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the partially cooked sausage to a plate. Set aside.
- Add the remaining tablespoon olive oil to the pan, reduce the heat to medium, and add the minced vegetables. Cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are very soft, 6 to 8 minutes. Do not brown; reduce the heat if necessary.
- Add the wine; continue cooking, stirring to scrape any brown bits from the bottom of the pan, until the wine is mostly absorbed by the vegetables, a few minutes.
- Add the tomatoes, cream, salt, pepper, sugar, thyme and bay leaves and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the sauce is thickened, about 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, transfer the sausage to a cutting board and chop into smaller pieces (big chunks don’t work well in lasagna).
- Add the sausage back to the pan and continue simmering, covered, until the sausage is fully cooked and the flavors meld together, about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Fish out the bay leaves and discard.
For the Ricotta Mixture
- Combine the ricotta, cream cheese, egg, garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano, salt and pepper in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until evenly combined. Add the basil and pulse until finely chopped.
For Assembly
- Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
- Spread about 1½ cups of sauce in the bottom of a 9 x 13-in (23 x 33-cm) baking dish. Arrange 3 noodles over the sauce (there will be a bit of space between the noodles; they expand as they cook). Dollop a third of the ricotta filling over the noodles, then spread evenly to cover. Sprinkle with ¾ cup (90 g) of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat the layering of sauce, noodles, ricotta filling and mozzarella 2 more times. Top with the remaining 3 noodles. Spoon the remaining sauce over the noodles, then sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano.
- Spray a large piece of foil with nonstick cooking spray. Cover the lasagna tightly with the foil, sprayed side down. Bake for 40 minutes. Carefully uncover and increase the oven temperature to 400°F (205°C). Bake, uncovered, until the noodles are tender, the sauce is bubbling, and the edges are golden and puffed, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand for about 15 minutes before serving.
Notes
Pair with
Nutrition Information
This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated through an online nutritional calculator, Edamam.com. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.
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Made this tonight for dinner and followed the recipe exactly. So glad I did because it tasted awesome! My husband said it was like being at a restaurant. Definitely making this again and again.
This was terrific. Never made lasagna before because it’s usually too much trouble, and handling cold cooked noodles is just not my thing. But this is everything the recipe says and more. I will be making this again. 🙂
Delicious! I am so impressed! I question the need for any added salt, given that in the sausage and cheeses. I am thinking just a drop of lemon juice might “brighten” the ricotta mixture instead of adding salt, and eliminating the added salt in the sauce would likely be unnoticeable. Thoughts?
Yes, Roseanne, I think you could get away with those tweaks. Please let me know how it turns out!
Jenn – Do you think this would work if you assembled it all the day before and refrigerated it, then baked it straight from the fridge? If so, how would you adjust the cooking temp/time? I love your recipes, by the way!
Yes, Alison — that will work. You’ll probably need to add 10 minutes or so to the cook time. And glad you’re enjoying the recipes!
Hi,
In my country, there is no such thing as sweet Italian sausage. Here (Hungary), sausages are usually flavored with paprika, caraway and garlic. Bavarian sausages are also available (those do not have paprika). What kind of flavoring does the sausage you use have? Is it a smoked sausage? Can you use ground meat instead?
Otherwise, I love your website and recipes, I’m gonna bake your banana oatmeal cookies tonight! Thanks!
Eszter
Hi Eszter, I wouldn’t recommend smoked sausage (you want it raw). I think that the Hungarian sausage would be fine and would suggest sticking to sausage (versus ground meat). Or, if you’d prefer, you could go with 1/2 ground meat and 1/2 ground pork, but the sauce won’t be nearly as flavorful. Hope you enjoy!
This was delicious–a nice variation on traditional lasagna. My husband is a kidney donor so we carefully watch our salt and fat intake, so while I would stick to the recipe for company, our family version is much lower in fat and salt. I do not add any salt, use no salt added tomatoes and added a couple of dashes of red pepper flakes and oregano to the sausage mixture and finally milk instead of cream. Also, I switched the ricotta to no salt cottage cheese, did not add salt and reduced the Parmesan cheese to 1/2 cup.
Let me begin by saying, this is my favorite food website and that’s saying a lot! This isn’t my first recipe review and certainly won’t be my last! Because Jenn and her recipes are amazing!! I preface this because I have disclosed a very embarrassing moment below, lol! I know there are others out there who have done something equally embarrassing when something is this good! At first glance, I thought…lasagna with no beef and carrots, cream cheese and cream?? Not sure how I feel about that…coming from the traditional, beef/sausage combo with a plain red sauce, ricotta mindset…I followed this recipe exactly, except for one minor change (which I will get to) and I have to say it is absolute perfection!!!! Not only is this the best lasagna I have ever had, the ingredient amounts are just PERFECT! Everything fits exactly into a 9 x 13 pan, with nothing left over! OK, to give others an idea just how good this is….(I can’t believe I’m admitting this!) I actually ate a piece right out of the fridge, cold…with my hand, like as if I was eating an apple (don’t judge me!)
At first glance the recipe looks a bit complicated, but it’s truly very simple and I think a novice could handle it!
The only change I made: I didn’t use olive oil to cook the sausage, I just didn’t think it was needed, as sausage can be pretty greasy. People…..you MUST MAKE THIS! Jenn, fantastic!!
This was wonderful. It was labor intensive…but so worth it. I shared my leftovers with my daughter and her family. She posted on Facebook that this was absolutely the best lasagna she had ever tasted. Thank you!
Is the wine a sweet red or a dry?
Hi Paula, I would use a dry red.
Oh my goodness. This was amazingly delicious. Definitely not the quickest recipe on the site, but worth it! I prepared it last night and baked it tonight for a family dinner. For working people, I recommend splitting up the preparation and baking because it took me a bit longer than indicated. Of course that was partly due to my incessant checking of the recipe to make sure I was following it exactly! My mom is not a huge lasagna lover and she said this was one of her favorite meals and probably the best lasagna she has ever had. So thank you! By the way I have made about 60% of the recipes on this site and, despite loving all of them, this is only the second time I’ve been compelled to leave a comment. Absolutely fantastic.