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I can’t believe I have never posted my easy cheesy lasagna recipe on the blog. This is the recipe I have been serving the boys (aka Mike’s friends) since the beginning of our college days. It’s the only recipe that I still pull up during Friendsgiving dinners as a nostalgic piece – the kind that takes us back to when we were living crammed in a dusty, run-down home because it was the cheapest rent we could find. I also used to make this recipe to feed 14 boys at the Santa Ana Boys and Girls Club when I used to cook family meals for them once a month!

Having learned it in college, it is obviously simple to make. It’s perfect for a quick weeknight family meal. It takes only a handful of inexpensive ingredients, and hardly any time and effort. But it’s delicious, and one of my favorite recipes during the colder months. It was still a hit at last years Friendsgiving, even after we’ve all moved on from instant ramen and canned meat! And if it’s a hit with college boys, I’m sure it’ll be welcomed by little ones as well! Serve it with freshly made sourdough bread and you’ll be the star of the show.

Easy Cheesy Lasagna Recipe

Ingredients

Please note: these ingredients are for a 9″x13″ baking dish with a bit of depth (think aluminum trays that they sell at the grocery store). It will yield a fairly tall lasagna, which I like. It will also serve a large party of 6 people or more.

If you have a smaller family (1-2 people), I would recommend using a 9″x13″ baking dish that’s shallow and cutting the ingredients in half. When I cook for just Mike and I, I use our glass pyrex baking dish. It yields a fairly flat lasagna, but then I take two lasagna squares and stack them on top of each other to make it taller when serving. This works for us, as we don’t want lasagna for an entire week!

Serves 6+ people. For a family of 1-2, cut the ingredients in half.

• Lasagna noodles (1 box is more than enough. Depending on your baking dish, there may be extra).
• Sour cream (16 oz, depending on your baking dish)
• Tomato Sauce (2 jars, depending on your baking dish)
• Provolone Cheese (2 packets of circular cheese slices)
• Mozzarella Cheese (for sprinkling on top.)
• Oregano (for sprinkling on top). We use the Evermill’s oregano along with their other spices. I truly believe quality spices make a difference. Some store-bought spices are so “weak” that they hardly taste like anything at all. But I stand by Evermill’s products. I have told friends and family that their spice rack is the best wedding gift anyone could ask for. I wrote a thorough review of it here, along with a coupon code WELCOME30 to give TheDebtist audience $30 OFF their counter-top spice rack.

The Process:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Boil water in a large pot. I like to use our cream dutch oven from Caraway Home. We have their entire cookware set and it’s a minimalist’s dream. They are beautiful and honestly the only pots and pans you would need in order to do all your cooking.
3. Cook lasagna noodles until al dente per the box’s instructions. If you make homemade pasta noodles like we sometimes do, then it should only take 1-2 minutes.
4. Drain the pasta noodles in a colander and run them under cold water to prevent sticking.
5. Start layering your lasagna! Place a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the 9″x13″ baking dish.
6. Layer pasta noodles (which happen to be about 13″) over the sauce. It takes about 3 noodles vertically placed.
7. Place about 5 slices of provolone cheese on top of the pasta.
8. Spread sour cream on top of the provolone cheese.
9. Layer on some pasta, and start the process over. Moving forward the order goes: pasta, sauce, provolone cheese, sour cream; pasta, sauce, provolone cheese, sour cream.
10. If you are using a whole box of pasta noodles, then it will create 5-6 layers. Make sure to ration out the other ingredients.
11. On the final layer, end with pasta and a generous amount of tomato sauce on top. I then liberally sprinkle oregano and mozzarella cheese.
12. Cover your creation with tin foil and place in the oven to bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.
13. Remove the tin foil and bake for another 5-10 minutes.
14. Remove from the oven and let cool before serving.

In case you were wondering, this batch was the shallower version stacked on top of each other. Our platters are from East Fork Pottery, a company that I’ve been in partnership now for years. We use their beautiful dishware EVERYDAY in our household. They are not only sturdy, functional, and dish-washer safe, they are also gosh darn gorgeous! Recently they launched a BLUE and BLACK colorway and I am drooling over them. Thankfully, they were added to the core collection and are yours for the taking.

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