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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This is hands down the most amazing recipe ever! We do not eat sausage, so I usually make two pans; one I add ground chicken to and the other I layer with chopped broccoli and carrots. The sauce is incredible and it only gets better the longer it sits. We enjoy it for days! Thank you so much for the amazing recipes, I have never tried one that we did not like!
Excellent recipe! My my 4 teenage boys loved it.
My food processor has broken. Can I use a ninja blender on the pulse mode to make the Ricotta mixture?
Hi Carolyn, It’s okay if your food processor is on the fritz – it will just be a bit more time-consuming/labor-intensive You could certainly do the cheese mixture in a blender. And, you’ll just want to ensure that the veggies are in small enough pieces that they kind of melt into the sauce. Hope you enjoy it!
Thank you. I’ll write back after I make this.
Jenn, I had a small chopper and that worked wonders on the veggies. This dish was terrific. I used hot Italian sausage and was so nervous it would be overpowering for my guests. But the cheese mixture toned it down just enough. One question, the noodles seemed mushy. Is this the product of the no bake noodles (I have never used them before). Any insight would be appreciated as I will definitely be making this again. I did assemble the day before, just an fyi.
Hi Carolyn, glad you enjoyed the lasagna but sorry you found the noodles to be mushy. The no bake noodles do you have a bit of a different texture but I wouldn’t describe them as mushy (assembling this ahead would not have impacted the texture of the noodles).
This is an excellent recipe. I have made the recipe twice and always make an extra lasagna for my parents or one for the freezer! The sauce is delicious, and the lasagna sets well and stays moist but isn’t drowning in sauce.
I make a pan of lasagna and freeze it every year at Christmas for each of my grown children and their families. I have tried many recipes over the years, but yours is the best. Making it is a labor of love, and our Christmas wouldn’t be the same without your beautiful lasagna! Many thanks, and happy holidays to you.
I accidentally used tomato sauce instead of crushed tomatoes. Do you think it will make a big difference in taste?
Hi Jennie, It should be fine. Enjoy!
Hi Jenn,
I can’t wait to try your lasagne recipe but just realized I bought Swiss Emmentale cheese instead of Mozzarella – do you think that would work?
Thank you for all your wonderful recipes – we have never been dissappointed!
DD
Hi Dale, technically it will work — it will just have a different flavor. And so glad you like the recipes! 🙂
I can’t seem to get the video to play and I really love to watch a video, gets me in the mood to start cooking! It starts, then advertisements, and then goes to an egg salad recipe, more advertisements and then goes to an enchilada recipe. What am I doing wrong???
Hi Pamela, You’re not doing anything wrong. I’m aware of how they work – giving you a snippet, followed by an ad and then moving on to another video. I wish it didn’t work that way and have requested that it be changed, but the network that I work with presents the videos that way and isn’t flexible to change them – frustrating for me too! If you see a recipe video that you’d like to see more of us, just search for the recipe on my blog, and one of the search results on the page will be the video. Just a heads up that while you’re viewing it, about 1/3 of the way through, you’ll get two little buttons show up on the right side of the video saying “next” or “stay?” Just click on the stay button and you should see the remainder of the video with no ad. Hope that helps and that you enjoy the lasagna if you make it!
This was the best homemade lasagna I’ve ever had. Served for friends. Recipe is perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing BUT in case you are missing heavy cream and cream cheese like I was, no worries! I bet they make the recipe better but it was perfectly fine without. All I had was 2% milk and a bit of cornstarch to sub for cream. Can’t wait to follow recipe as written.
Hi Jenn! I am in love with this lasagna and making it for a party of 14 this weekend. May I ask….would you make a double batch and cook in a larger pan OR would you do two separate? If one large pan, would the cook time increase? If you did 2 separate, can you bake at one time? I plan to make the night before and just bake the next day. I cannot thank you enough for your patience and advice! And for the outstanding recipes.
-Maura
Hi Maura, so glad you like the recipes! If you have the option to make it in two pans, I’d go that route as it ensures that they will bake evenly. You can bake them at the same time – just keep in mind that they may take a few extra minutes as the oven will be more crowded. Hope everyone enjoys!
Thank you so much! 🙂