Easy Eggplant Lasagna Recipe | Plant-based, Gluten-free

Hey everyone, Joy here. So throughout the whole summer I ate so much grilled eggplant and now that it's getting cooler I wanted to create a recipe that is perfect for the fall, that's warming and nourishing and tastes amazing. So I've made this easy eggplant lasagna but instead of your typical lasagna with ricotta, which is dairy cheese, I decided to make it totally plant-based and made my own cheese with cashews. Now don't worry if you are not dairy-free or you're not plant-based, you're gonna love this recipe because my husband Walker was very skeptical because he loves his lasagna and Italian food. He was skeptical that it could be as good without ricotta and he is now a believer. He was blown away. It was actually so before we get started make sure you hit that little bell and subscribe to my channel so you're always in the know when I have a new recipe or video and now that you've done that let's get to this recipe. So the reason I call this easy eggplant lasagna is because it's uncomplicated. It has all the basics, good quality ingredients, it isn't going to take you all day to make and you are going to love it. So as I mentioned instead of ricotta we are making cashew-based ricotta. So you're gonna take your cashews and you're gonna soak them for four to six hours or you could just do it overnight. You're gonna drain the water and then you pour those cashews into a high-power food processor. You could also use a blender for this as well. Now the key to a really good tasting plant-based cheese is lots of flavor. So to that I added nutritional yeast which adds the cheese factor. I squeezed in some lemon and lemon brightens up the flavor. I added garlic powder in there. If you wanted you could add some more seasoning like Italian seasoning if you wanted to but I didn't do that. Then I added a little bit of water to help with the creaminess. Then you blitz it up. Give it a taste test like do you want a little more nutritional yeast? You decide how you want your cheese to taste and once you've nailed it you're good to go. Okay so to this ricotta I'm actually adding some spinach. I absolutely love ricotta mixed with spinach so I've chopped up some fresh spinach. You could also use frozen and just let it thaw so it's not too watery. So in a big bowl you will mix your spinach together with your ricotta and add your dried herbs and again you can give this a taste test and see how you like it. Now if you want to make this with regular ricotta just follow all the same instructions and instead of making the cashew cheese you mix the spinach with regular ricotta so you can make it how you want it. Okay now we're going to move on to our eggplants. So you want two large eggplants and you're going to slice them. Now you don't have to peel eggplant and remember that a lot of the phytonutrients and most of the fiber is actually contained within the peel and the amazing thing is once you bake it the peel gets nice and soft so it's totally edible. So you're going to slice up all of the eggplant and then you want the eggplant to sweat and what I mean by that is so I'm going to spread out my eggplant in my 13 by 9 dish and I'm going to sprinkle some sea salt on top and what that does is that helps to draw out some of the moisture so you don't have a soppy wet eggplant lasagna when you're done and after about 10 minutes just soak up that moisture with a towel super easy. Okay now the fun part let's build our eggplant lasagna. So you have your 13 by 9 baking dish and you're going to put a little bit of tomato sauce on the bottom of your pan and that will just prevent the eggplant from sticking. Now for the tomato sauce you could use store-bought pasta sauce or you could buy two cans of diced tomatoes or whole tomatoes and just blitz them in your food processor or your blender but you're going to need to add some like different herbs and spices to that. The other thing you could do if you want to make this lasagna a little more complicated but just add more flavors you could saute up some mushrooms and onions and add that to your pasta sauce too but since this is an easy eggplant lasagna I'm not doing any of that I just use store-bought sauce and it's just really easy. Then you're going to evenly spread out a layer of your sliced eggplant. Next up is your spinach cashew ricotta so you can add a dollop on top of each eggplant slice and then you can spread it out with a spatula. So next you're going to add a layer of your tomato sauce and I like to just add like a spoonful on top of each eggplant and then spread it out with a spoon so you just kind of keep repeating that until you run out of eggplant and ricotta. So once you have your final layer of tomato sauce I like to add that final dollop of the spinach ricotta because it adds that extra layer of creaminess and also it just looks really pretty but that's not the final step yet just wait the final step is the plant-based parm and this is something I actually just keep in my fridge all the time and it has so many other uses I use it on salads on avocado toast it's very easy to make so just keep it as a staple in your fridge and then you have it when you make this easy eggplant lasagna. Okay so in your large food processor you're gonna add pumpkin seeds if you don't have pumpkin seeds you could also use sunflower seeds that's really nice too you're gonna add some nutritional yeast for that cheesy flavor some hemp hearts for that protein and good fat some garlic powder and salt. Now you're just gonna blitz it up till nice and crumbly put it in a mason jar with a lid and you store it in your fridge but you're gonna use that to sprinkle on top of your easy eggplant lasagna for that final touch oh it's so delicious and make sure you've preheated your oven by the way for 350 degrees or 180 celsius and you're gonna bake your eggplant for 45 to 50 minutes now when you remove it you're gonna be really excited to eat it because it's gonna smell so good but let it rest that's a pro tip and key to making a good lasagna especially with eggplant because it's so spongy and it absorbs all that flavor and juices so let it rest for 10 minutes and then slice a piece oh my god you're gonna have your mind blown how good it is love it no one will be missing the dairy ricotta whatsoever because it has so much wonderful flavor you can store it in your fridge for up to a week I don't think I would freeze this because eggplant's kind of funny and sometimes it can get like too soggy once it thaws but honestly it tastes so good you probably won't have it long enough to freeze it anyways I hope you guys love this recipe as much as we do give me a thumbs up if you like this video comments or questions below I'm here for you guys click the little bell because that gives you notifications when I have a new video and please subscribe to my channel thank you so much guys and have a joyous day bye