Smoked Sausage Takes This Lasagna to Another Level

Okay, folks, listen, it's that time of the year, right? It's cooling off. And this is my favorite time of the year because now we get a chance to make these, you know, these Southern comfort, you know, stuff to stick to your ribs type of meals. Listen, before I ramble and, you know, start to over talk it, I'm going to tell you guys, I'm going to make a Southern meaty style lasagna that you're going to do a back flip for. With that being said, let's get it. Okay, so look, I'm going to go ahead and show you some of these ingredients. You know, even when you see them, you know, it is a little bit more than what we normally use. You know what I mean? Because we've been getting through the summer. So we had those ingredients, right? Now that we transitioned into the fall, you want to check this out. Now, everything that you're seeing is broken into three different spots, right? So listen, three different sections. You got the section with the meat and the sauce, the middle section, you got your ricotta cheese, and then all the way to the screen, right? That's where you got your noodles. You know what I mean? And you got your cheese where we're going to layer it and put it all together. And I'm going to show you guys just how to do it, right? And with that being said, don't forget the full ingredient list is on my smokingandgrillingwithab.com. And don't forget that's w-i-t-a-b.com. Okay, so first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and start to, you know, boil, you know, my pasta noodle, right? I got to say this part right here. Whatever noodle you get, you got to read the box, right? Because this right here is going to be key. We want to make them al dente, right? But the real trick is you want to do, you want them a little bit on this side of being al dente, right? So we don't want them quite al dente. Just say, so if it say, I'm going to give you an example. If it tells you, you want to be nine minutes to al dente, right? You want to take them out, like you want to stop them at about seven minutes. You know what I mean? So I say anywhere between a minute and a half to two minutes prior to, right? So my box, I read my instructions. I just take two minutes off and I take them off. Now I already got my water boiling. I already hit the salt water in there and all of that. Look, you don't want to break these. So this is what I do. I put these in here like that, right? Even having something room temperature brings the boiling down. All right. So look at that. Everything's still on high underneath. It'll eventually catch back up. Now you only need about 12. It depends on the size of your, you know, your casserole dish. Now I'm going to take, let's go with a, let's go with a round one. All right. So I'm going to leave them like this for a minute. I don't want them to stick together. So the trick will be after this starts to boil, you know what I mean? And you start to soften up a little bit. I want to come here, you know, and do like this just so that they don't stick. See how they still move? These little tips, you know, you come up with, you know, as you start to cook a lot, you know, this is what you call experience. Okay. So while we boil in our, you know, our pasta noodle, I'm going to go ahead and cut this down. What we're doing is we just multitasking, right folks? Okay. So you guys, I'm going to be honest with you. If I wanted to, I could have cut these down to like little, little circles, you know what I mean? But I'm going to cut them down like this. You know what I mean? Just so we can get it to spread and we can get a whole lot of, you know, flavor, right? Now you guys can use andouille. You can use whatever type of sauces you like. Hillshire make a good andouille. They make a good smoked sauces anyway. You know, for those of you guys that have it, like at your local butcher, get whatever you want. And then if this is too big for you, you can just take this and then cut these down too. So I'm going to finish those. And right now I'm going to check my timer because I think my pasta noodle should be just about done. Okay. So now I'm going to go ahead and check it. I'm going to take these. Actually, I'm turning my fire off. I believe it's ready to go, right? I can feel these with this, right? Oh, yeah, this is it. They still got a lot of, you know, a lot of structure to them. If I was going to go al dente, I'd go just a little bit more. Look, nothing stuck. You see that right there? Now we want to stop this cooking process. So I'm going to hurry up. I got a colander. It's in the sink. We off here. Let's come over here. And remember I told you we need 12. I made myself 16 just in case anything, you know, tears, right? So cold water, we pour this out. I don't need any of the starchy water, right? We get that out. And if you guys look, you see, I got my hot soapy water. It's ready to go. Now I just hit it like this. And what we want to do is just cool it down because we don't want it to become al dente and even overcooked, right? So now that little trick is what I do. I got two baking sheets, right? I lined it with some, look, baking, I mean, some parchment paper. And what I do is because we didn't get to al dente, I go ahead and put these down here like that and stretch them out because they're not quite as soft as we would like them. You know what I mean? Yet. Let's just say that, yet. So we just put them out like this. Keeps them this way. And I'm going to have some extra, but don't forget, I told you I made some extra because in the past, I'm doing a good job this time. In the past, I've had them like this and you know, I rip them and stuff like that. You know what I mean? So now we just get them, put them on here, just the way you guys see. All right. So now that I got this cut up, now, you know, you guys got some options too. You could have used some breakfast, uh, like Italian mild sauces, or if you want a little bit of heat in there, you could have put some, uh, you know, some spicy Italian, you know, sauces in there. I just elected to use some smoke sauces. And then what I did was I cut it down, right? So now I got heat underneath the bottom of this. Let me just adjust that. I'm gonna go ahead and add just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. We'll get that in there. And now once that heats up, once that oil gets nice and hot, it's ready, right? Now we just add this to it. Now what are we going to do is brown this, heat it up enough just so it releases its flavor. And then we're going to cook our ground beef in it. All right. So once we got a little color on there and I can look down there and see that the andouille flavor is inside of this pot, right? You see that? Look at the color. Look, I'm going to take this heat off. Any of that down there on the bottom, that's the fine. We're going to get all that up too. Don't worry about that. So now that I got the fire off, I'm just pushing this over here because this is gad, right? So if I keep it over here like this, now I'm going to just take this out. And then all of my oil and all the fine, I want that to stay in there because I'm going to come right back on top. I'm not going to add nothing, but I'm going to add this 80-20 ground beef to it. All right. So there you have it. You know what I mean? You can see, I already told you guys this is going to be a meaty lasagna, right? I'm going to set that outside of the way. We got this in here. Any more that I didn't get out, I just take it and discard it. Now we go ahead and just add our ground beef. All right. So now we'll go ahead and just prep, right? We'll prep our veggies. Now, you see how I cut that? This is all good bell pepper, folks. That, you keep that. We just want to get rid of that. And then for me, let's see if I can do it where you guys can see it. If I take it and I just cut right there on the web, you know, where it attaches itself to the like that. Now I can take this and just push it and look, we got that. Then if so, you guys want to save those and do your thing, you can grow your own, you know, for next year. All right. So, you know, the rule is when you dicing, they're small for their taste, right? And it's big for texture and a little bit more, you know, a little bit of taste, right? I'm making this one just a little smaller because I want to get that bell pepper taste in here. And I know some of you guys right now are probably saying like, man, I ain't never really put that in there. That means you're new to this channel. You know what I mean? But we start with them Southern flavors, right? And that is the name of this video, right? But you guys got to just trust me. So I got my bell peppers over there. I got two different sides. Now look right here on the inside. Now, just the way you guys saw me put that in, I left it that way. Now I come with my masher, right? And I start breaking things up. I just wanted to form a crust on the bottom and get to, you know, going. Remember all that fine down there, all that's going to come up as I put each different thing in here, especially when I come with the onions, you know, and these bell peppers, the acidity in that, I pick all of the rest of the fine and that's our flavor coach. Now you guys are knowing that we starting to learn how to, you know, Southern cook. Now we use 80, 20, right? So it's going to render down a little fat. Check me out. This is what we're going to do. You want to get yourself some napkins or if you guys got to like a, uh, what is that? I use a splash guard sometime, but you see this right here. We don't want that in there, right? So I just pull this over here like that. Let me turn this fire off. Now I take this, you see that over there? I take this and I just lay that in here like that. And I let this work. You might need to do this a couple of times. You know what I mean? I do this, especially like when you have something and you got oil on the top, just get it all up. And then when you finish, look, it should look something like that. Now I'm going to add some more fire back underneath the bottom of here. Bring that heat up. I'm starting with a medium high. Yeah, no, this is a medium high. That's what I got under there. I'm just trying to think like, what should I say? But we got there there and that's fine. Now check this part out. Now we finna come with our onions, right? You know, I like to put my onions in first to always give them a head start. All right, so now I'll let this go for about one minute. Start letting that get some heat, start to break down just a little bit, right? And then in goes the bell peppers. All right, so this is what we're going to do now. Now I'm getting ready to load up my garlic press. You guys better get one of these because I don't know if we're going to have enough to make it through the holiday. If you don't have one, let's go ahead and grab it now. And I'm not trying to like make no shameless plug or nothing like that, you know? So listen, I don't have to worry about where I put my garlic at because my whole bottom of my Dutch oven is completely covered, right? So I don't have to worry about nothing hitting the hot pan, the hot oven and, you know, burn. So we'll just do it like this, right? We'll go ahead and mince. You can see how it is in there, right? I'll just make it on the top. It'll allow me to continue to talk. And then anything else that I have, all of this on the side, all of that, I'm going to go ahead and just repress because we want all of the garlic in there. You see that? Right now, I'm getting ready to take this and now I'm going to work with it. This only takes about one minute, folks. Just you'll know once it touches something hot because when they do, it becomes nice and fragrant and becomes that flavor and smell that aromatic that we all grown to love, you know, from garlic, right? Oh, man. Wish you guys could smell that right there, right? So we'll just keep moving it like this and we'll do this for just one minute. All right. So after one minute, now it's time for us to go in with our tomato paste, right? You guys got to get some small Tupperware because I don't know, this is like the smallest I've ever seen it, you know? So I want to put a couple of tablespoons of this in there. Even if you put just a little bit more than that, it's okay, right? Now the rest of it, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put it in a small Tupperware and put it in there. We're going to start cooking with that, folks, so don't worry. If you follow me, I'm going to give you an excuse to go ahead and just put some and save some and we're going to work with it, right? So it doesn't melt like you think it will once it get in here, but it does loosen up, becomes a little bit more viable and pliable, right? Next thing you know, look, we got diced onions. I mean, excuse me, diced tomatoes. You're going to add those. Everything goes in here. Don't, do not, you know, take nothing and drain it or nothing like that. You just want to add it. You hear that? Look, you guys can start to see a way of starting to come together, right? This helps that tomato paste, you know, becomes more like on the liquid side, right? Now we got our tomato sauce. And don't forget, I told you guys the full ingredient list is on the website. That's SmokingandGrillingWithAB.com and that's W-I-T-A-B.com, right? For the full printable, downloadable, screenshotable, whatever you want to do with it. And you can even save it. All right. Now we go ahead and add our crushed tomatoes. Oh yeah. Now you guys are seeing how this comes together. Now, you know what? One of the things I forgot to show you guys, I actually got to get the can out of there, but this is going to be key. And this is the way that I cook really. So we control everything with our sodium, right? So let me get them out. Look at here. I try to cook with products. You know what I mean? See how I say no salt added. You know what I mean? We want to be a little bit more conscious of what we put in our bodies. You know what I mean? A lot of us are working with and against that high blood pressure. You know what I mean? So why not use the less we can, and then we salt as we go. That way we control it. We're not putting too much salt, you know, sodium in there. So when it says no sodium added, I roll with it folks. All right. So now we're going to go ahead and just start adding, you know, I'm going to start with my brown sugar. You know, we'll get that in there. And remember all this has been measured out. You know what I mean? I've been making this so long. I just know how much to put in here, right? This is my SPG. I'll set that over there. Then we got our W sauce. You guys can see the way these flavors are coming together, right? Then I use some of my little steak and burger rub, right? We come with the Italian seasoning. I know some of y'all thinking like, dang, you still got Italian seasoning? Yes, sir. That's an incredible blend, you know, of seasonings. It looks like it's a lot, but you can see it's not really a lot, right? So we got that. Now we'll come with our basil. You don't That's it right there. We got smoked paprika. There we go. There we go. That's enough. And here's where I go a little light folks. Just that crushed red pepper, just to have a little heat. For those of you guys who want to have the heat, you know, go ahead and, you know, do your thing, have at it. All right. So now we're going to add our beef broth, right? It only takes about a half a cup. This doesn't do nothing, but it adds flavor also. But what it does is it thins it out a little bit. That's all we need. Oh yeah. Come back over here. Look at that right there. It has a little nice dynamic to it also, though. I don't want to play it down. But look at that right there. I know some of y'all thinking right now, like, man, I'd like to stick some angel hair pasta in there. Look. All right. Now we're going to reintroduce our sauces to it. Well, you know what? I said reintroduce. No, we finna introduce. You know what I mean? And then notice what I'm doing. I'm taking my spatula right here. You know what I mean? And I want to get all of the flavor, anything that, you know, came off of it as it was resting. That's the flavor. Remember, we left some of that along with the fine and the bottom. Yes, sir. Okay. So once I got it all mixed up, we set this to a simmer. I'm not going to put no top on there. It's completely uncovered. If it thickens up too much, you know, you can always add yourself a little bit more beef broth. But right now we finna let it simmer for about 20-25 minutes. After that, we're going to move on. I'm going to tell you when it'd be a good time for you guys to go ahead and, you know, heat up your oven, preheat your oven, but just hold on. But now right here is where I like to preheat, right? Because it's all about timing. So as I preheat, I like to get to 375. So I set my oven to 375, you know, hit start. And then I go ahead and continue on, you know, with our shredding. Now I'm shredding my mozzarella on the large side. So I usually tell everybody to do it on the small side, but mozzarella is so soft, what it does is it kind of like, if you do it on the small side, it'll like crumble. So best practice is to use the large side. And then what you're seeing right here is all of them done. And at the upper right, you're going to see our cheddar cheese, right? That's our sharp cheddar. To the right of that at the top, that will be our mozzarella. And then down at the bottom, that's our parm. Now I went ahead, this is what you want to mix when you're making your ricotta, right? So I added some of my parm and you can see that I got my mozzarella in there and then I got my parsley, right? So this right here is 32 ounces of ricotta cheese. What I did was, I just, you know, you want to eyeball it. I mean, the best practices is to measure it out, but you know what? I just eyeball it and want to make sure I at least have 16 ounces, which would be half of that container, right? Now what I do is I try to just like fold it in, you know what I mean? Just to work it in. You know, I have some, I could have added my egg, but I wait. I just like to work with it right here. You know what I mean? To get it incorporated a little bit, because once you add the egg, look, watch how it softens up, you know, as I work that in there, you know, so it'll soften itself up. And then as always, when you want to have that perfect blend, I use my SPG, right? Now that's available on my website. If you don't, I have the measurements there on my website also, for those of you guys that don't have it, you know what I mean? So I got it for you both ways. Now here's where I'm going to give you guys a level up. If you look at my left hand, it'll be to your right. Look, we're going to pipe it in. In my last couple of videos, when I made different style, you know, lasagnas, I usually put it on there and I fight it trying to get it to spread. So what you want to do is put it in a Ziploc bag, like you see. Once you have it in there, then we get it nice and tight, cut a corner, and then we pipe. After all that's done, now it's time for us to go ahead and get that casserole dish, right? So look, you see how I'm putting that down there on the bottom? That's what you want. You want to start with a little bit of a layer of meat. Layer of meat. Just keep your noodle from sticking. I know sometimes your brain will tell you, like, hey, start with a layer of that. Even though we spread, it's just best practices to start with the meat first. This is kind of like traditional. Then we reach over and then you just start, you know, layering it. As you can see, for this size casserole dish that I have, it's kind of like the perfect size, right? Three strips went all the way from one side to the other. Nice and smooth. Now back to the piping bag. You see what I was talking about? You just cut the tip. You know, I mean, if the poor man's piping bag. Notice how, okay, so now I just start squeezing a little bit on there. Be mindful. It depends on how many layers you make, how much you squeeze in there. You want to make sure you got enough ricotta cheese to make it. And then for me, I use the back of my spatula. That's my little spoon spatula. I really don't know the name of it, but you know, I got my, you know, my favorite black spatula. Then I got this one right here that has the indentation. It acts as a spoon also. So when I turn it on the back, look at what I'm doing. I'm just like getting it to spread nice and smooth. And then we're going to come with a layer of meat right on top of that. Look at that right there, folks. This is how you guys go on. You should be saying, oh, we, you can look at the color. You can see that steam, that right there just melts that cheese and gets everything right. And this is a medley of flavors. You know what I mean? Please try this. Let me know down in the comment section below what you guys think. You know what I mean? And then we go from there. I'm going to be quiet and let you just look at that right there. All right. Then once, you know, you're done layering it that way. Now you can add yourself some cheese. Now we're making the lasagna. You can make as many layers as you want. As long as you got a dish that I handle it because it is quickly like rise up. Right. So you can go two layers, three layers, even four. But even saying that you got to go ahead and have, make sure you got enough filling for everything. Right. Also, let me just say, there's no real order when it comes to cheese, you know? So you put it in there like how you want to do it. You know what I mean? Whatever you do, the main thing is just to get them, you know, get all your cheese layered on there and then you can come back with, you know, your next layer of noodle. And then we just kind of like repeat. Now you can see I packed this one right here. It is very meaty. And what you guys don't see is I had a little extra and I got a small casserole dish that I put off to the side. You guys will see it later because both of them are going in the oven at the same time. Anyway, now you want to lightly tint, you know, your casserole dish, right? When I say lightly, the reason you don't want to pack it down because it's up to the top. You don't want none of your cheese sticking on the top and it's okay to let it breathe. Okay. So it's done now. Now remember we uncovered it. You know what I mean? Remember we had it lightly, lightly tinted anyway. You know what I mean? So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just show you guys this one right here. Be careful folks. This is hot. Look at that right there. Right. So I'm gonna set this one over here. That was from the extra that we had. And then this one here, look at that. I'm finna hit it with a little parsley, but the main thing is we got to let this sit up, right? We got to let that rest and firm up right now. It's like super soft. If we don't, uh, if we cut this now, it's not going to turn out right. You know what I mean? So you want to let it rest for at least 30 minutes to cool. It kind of like firms up, but still be nice and hot. So I'll see you guys in about 35 minutes. Okay, folks. Look, now let this rest. I had to make a run. So this actually rested for about four hours, right? So I actually had to like do a cut cause I wanted to do the cheese pool for you and all of that. So I, what I did was I cut it, put it in the microwave, just brought it out. But I want you guys to come on in here and see it. This is what you guys would have anyway. Look at that. So, Ooh, man, this is hot down here on the bottom. So look at that. You can see the I know some of y'all saying that look just like Stouffer's, but it's better than Stouffer's. Anyway. You know what? I think this is like one of the better looking ones. You know what the key is? You got to let them rest before you cut them. And listen, I don't want to over target no more than I'm already am. I'm going to go in here and just, Ooh, my goodness. All right. Come on. Come on back. I'm going to do it. Let me stand in front so you can see that steam. You see that right there? Now don't forget. We put bell peppers and all that. We made it Southern style. This right here is fire. Now with that being said, I hate to burn my mouth. Bon Appetit. We did that. All right. So look, I don't be wanting you guys to like, just sit here and like watch me eat. But look, you see that right there? We knocked all that down. Now, one of the things I like about, you know, lasagna is the fact that when you make it, it's like spaghetti to me. You know, you can make a lot of it and you don't need to last you. If you got like a home with like just three people in it, you know, like most people say they really don't be doing them left over, but I promise you, you make this right here. This send you so much over the top with all of the flavors and it's not traditional, you know, an addition, a traditional Italian style, you know, lasagna. This really got that home feel to it. Easy to make. You know what I mean? Lasts a couple of days, maybe meal prepping this right here. Stay good for you. You know what I mean? Throughout the week. Now let me know down in the comment section below. You saw what I put in here. What would you have put in here to make it even more? Right? Should I have put a little celery in there and made it the Holy Trinity? You guys talk to me, let me read it. And you know what? The sky is the limit, right? Just like blows your mind. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like smash that subscribe button and just tell everybody out there, there's a channel out here to simplify these recipes and taking the mystery out of cooking. Talk to me, folks. I want to read it. I'm out. Peace.