I Spent 6 Hours Making Lasagna From Scratch

I make my lasagna or what I have affectionately referred to as my love lasagna maybe once or twice a year and if you are receiving a slice from me then you know it's because I love you. I pour my heart and soul into making this recipe. It's filled with layers of slow cooked ragu that spends three hours bubbling away on the stovetop, a cheesy béchamel that requires constant whisking and Homemade lasagna sheets. I fear the art of slow cooking is slowly being lost in a world that craves quick and easy meals and I understand why because more often than not I am one of those people too but if you do find yourself with a day at home and a few hours to spare then I urge you to make this recipe. I usually pull out the food processor to throw all my veggies into for my sofrito. It's just a much quicker and easier way to finely chop everything but lately I have really missed cooking or slow cooking per se and I just wanted to take the time to chop everything by hand. I find that these types of days in particular this kind of activity can really ground me, free my mind and just give me a way to relax from the chaos of my life. The chaos being a two-year-old with very big feelings at the moment. And a five-year-old who's very nervous to start school next year. I have finely chopped three celery stalks and three carrots that I have given a quick peel to beforehand. And that metal bowl you see on my counter, that is for all my vegetable scraps that I store in my freezer and pull out when I am due to make a homemade stock. Now my most hated part, cutting the onion because it always makes me cry. And I've tried every trick you've all recommended and... Nothing has seemed to work so far. We also need one brown onion. Oh, I never get that right. F*** it. Here we go. Starting early today. I'm going to try with my sunglasses on. Oh, it's a bit better. Oh my goodness, I can't do it. Look at me, I'm a mess. As I'm getting older, it's getting worse, I don't know why. I can't even open my eyes much, but I wanted to show you how bad. It is for me. I seriously think I'm developing an onion allergy as I get older because this never used to happen. All right we need a quick onion makeup fix intermission and I'll be right back. That was so bad. All right I'm feeling better again. I like quite a lot of garlic in my sofrito. It's a bit of a yucky garlic. I'll cut that bit off. I always like to use a mix of fresh tomatoes and passata in my ragu. I find the fresh tomatoes offer a much lighter taste and feel to the sauce, but I cannot stand tomato skins in my ragu. So I like to boil some water and submerge the tomatoes in them. This will make the skin slide right off. Thank you. While the tomatoes sit in the hot water, they need around five minutes, I am going to give the kitchen a little clean and reset. I find keeping up with the dishes really helps on these long, slow cooking days. See? The skin slides right off. And that is not only due to the fact these tomatoes were sitting in hot water, it's because they were incredibly ripe. It's very rare that you will find my kitchen bench without tomatoes sitting on it getting ripe and juicy. I keep this in the freezer for when I want to make my next vegetable or chicken stock. It's a really great no waste recipe. Now while I only make my lasagna once, or if you're lucky twice a year, this ragu is something I make at least once a month. It is such an essential and stable recipe in my home. Everyone in my family absolutely loves it and it's also incredibly versatile. You can toss pasta through it, turn it into a delicious baked ziti, a bit of a Mexican bean situation or of course use it to make my lasagna. I am using a mix of ground beef and pork. I do like to add some ground lamb as well but that is getting harder and and harder to find so it rarely makes an appearance these days but it does add a really lovely flavor if you can get your hands on it. You may be wondering why I am shaping the meat into patties. I know this looks a little unorthodox, but by frying the meat like this, we are creating lots of surface area, meaning more caramelization, meaning more flavor. And you simply cannot go wrong with more flavor. Season your meat well with salt and pepper on both sides. You will be surprised how much salt this recipe can take, but when we are slow cooking something like we are doing here, I do recommend adding more seasoning than you're comfortable with. Now, I love cooking in a heavy-based pot. Something about it just signifies comfort and coziness to me. Add lots of olive oil to the pot. I am waiting for the oil to get hot. Add your meat in batches. If we add too much meat to the pot, our meat will steam and boil, which is exactly what we do not want. We want that beautiful caramelization, remember. Once the meat is caramelized on one side, flip it over and repeat on the other. My mother's little trick to breaking up mince is to use a whisk and it does the job incredibly well. Fry your mince until there is no more liquid coming out of it. This does take a little bit more time, but it is worth it, trust me on that. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside for now. I'm a sucker for salt and pepper fried meats, my favorite thing to snack on. We are going to add more olive oil to our pot and then toss our sofrito into it. And we're going to cook our sofrito down for quite a long time, around 10 to 12 minutes. And I would have usually done more onion, but as you saw the reaction I had to onion, I decided to just stick with the one. Once the sofrito has cooked down you will know when it's ready because the onions will become fragrant and translucent. Add the garlic and let that cook for two minutes. Add the fresh chopped tomatoes and stir them through. There will be some opinions about this next step but I do like to add some brown sugar to my ragu but hear me out before you get angry. Fresh and tinned tomatoes in Australia are just not the same as Italian ones and we do need that little bit of sweetness to flavor them. The sugar also helps break down the tomatoes making them lovely and Demi, turn up the heat and for goodness sakes, fry off your tomato paste. This is an important step that I see a lot of people skip, but I... Needs to be done. It absolutely needs to be done or we are just adding a bitter element to our sauce which will not taste nice at all. After that's done and the tomato paste is a brick red color and is sticking to the bottom of your pot, deglaze it with white or red wine. Just make sure it's a nice wine that you would like to drink as well. Add the mince back to the pot along with the passata and some water that I like to add to my passata jar and give it a little shake around so we don't miss out on even one drop of that sauce. Season with salt and pepper We have our ragu slow cooking, it needs to slow cook for three to four hours so while that's happening I'm going to get started on our pasta dough. I'm cooking with my fancy good eggs today. You will notice that I am using a digital scale for when making my pasta dough and this is a non-negotiable item for me in my kitchen. I know it can be frustrating when measurements aren't supplied in cups but to be honest I do not trust a dough recipe that isn't provided in grams. Two cups of one brand of flour may look very different to another brand so it's important that we weigh everything with scales. That way we are controlling our dough, So making sure we get the consistency right every time. Almost. My dough was a little on the wet side here but I really don't know what went wrong. I had my digital scale after all. All right here we go. It's a 40 degree day here and I'm not looking forward to kneading this dough because it's quite the workout and I'm gonna get very sweaty but let's do this. Actually feeling a little bit hard work. Perfect resistance. I'm gonna leave that rest for I think it's around 30 minutes and I'm going to have a little lunch break and have a cold drink because that is tough work needing some dough. See you soon little friend. What is it? Did you find a fly? It's time to put my feet up for a minute and I'm going to do a little bit of emails in between with a cold drink. I learned to make pasta dough after I found a pasta machine sitting on the half price rack at an op shop that was next door to my old offices. This pasta machine cost me five dollars, reduced from ten, and it is probably the worst pasta machine money can buy, even if it is just five dollars, but for some reason I have never The edges of my pasta sheets are always frayed. The handle comes off at least every 10th turn and every single attachment it came with no longer works. But I guess you could say I am one loyal woman. Oh, this is honestly the worst pasta machine money can buy you. When making lasagna, every single inch of my house gets used. This one got really messed up. I truly hate that pasta machine. I know that everyone has their own version of lasagna. Some people like to layer it with ricotta, which I believe is the Italian-American way to do it. Others like to only have meat sauce, but in my house, we absolutely love a cheesy and garlic version. I'll lay it throughout. It's rich, buttery, creamy, and is always my favorite part of my lasagna. My goo has been bubbling away for three hours and is finally ready. If only you could smell my home right now. This is probably my most hated part about making lasagna. The finish line is in sight but I have this dreaded task to do. I tend to always burn myself when blanching my lasagna sheets and while this isn't a step everyone takes, it's how I was taught to make lasagna and I am absolutely petrified of skipping it. I am terrified I will ruin a whole day's work so I stick with it, burnt hands and all. That's a good one. Done! My most hated part of making lasagna is blanching those bloody lasagna sheets. I burn myself and I'm not very coordinated with it. There you You will notice I leave the pasta sheets hanging over the baking dish and this is because they crisp up in the oven and have a chip-like texture. It's one of my daughters and my favourite part. I forgot to grate my cheese so I'm doing this in the worst way possible and I also just sliced my thumb. But when you get to this part of cooking... You've been doing it for what, six, seven hours straight to get a little bit scrappy. You don't want too much cheese though. I've done this before with too much cheese and it was very, very oily at the bottom. She's beautiful. All right, this is our dinner tonight. And the most important part when making lasagna is need to let that rest for at least 20 to 30 minutes. It really does make all the difference. So we're going to leave this to rest and then we're going to slice into it. Is it yummy? Mm-hmm. Yummy.