Thursday, August 12, 2010

Zucchini Lasagna

Gabe's friend gave us 3 HUGE zucchinis (I'm talking the largest I've ever seen!) a few days ago. I'm not a huge zucchini fan, as in I won't buy it myself so I had no idea what to do with them.

One of them we sliced and then we breaded the slices and baked them until crisp-they turned out pretty good!

Yesterday since I had off I decided to try a zucchini lasagna. I've never made it before and don't have a recipe. I basically just made regular lasagna, but instead of noodles I used zucchini. Here's my "recipe"....

Zucchini Lasagna
1-2 zucchini (depending on size) sliced lengthwise so you get long slices
16oz ricotta cheese (I used part skim)
1 egg
1 clove garlic, minced
parsley
salt and pepper
1 jar pasta sauce (or make your own if you want!)
1 lb ground beef, browned, drained, and crumbled
1lb shredded mozzarella cheese

Combine ricotta, egg, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix well (I didn't measure the parsley, salt and pepper-just added a little of each). Pour a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of a 9x13" pan and spread. Add a layer of zucchini slices. Spread a thin layer of ricotta mixture over zucchini. Spread another thin layer of sauce. Add a layer of ground beef and mozzarella. Repeat layers until you reach close to the top of the pan (I had 3 layers). Top with one more layer of zucchini, sauce and a lot of mozzarella. Bake at 350 for an hour.

We really liked the way this turned out. I would definitely make this again! For the zucchini slices, I used my v-slicer and set it to 1/8" for the thickness and it worked out pretty well. Our zucchini was shaped oddly so I had to cut and piece them together a bit, but it worked out just fine. I also broiled the lasagna for a few minutes to brown the cheese and make it a little crispy. Definitely try this if you have a chance-it's really good! And since I'm not a huge zucchini fan, you know it must be good!

1 comment:

lasagna said...

I tried zucchini lasagna last week and surprisingly my kids ate it without any qualms. As if it's not veggie! Well, good thing I think that they love lasagna so they just trust that anything in a lasagna is supposed to be good, lol! I wonder how they'd take a legit veggie lasagna, hmmm, probably it's not a good idea to push it too soon. Maybe a spinach and mushroom lasagna will do...for now...;)