Tag Archives: jarred sauce

Culinary Anarchy | You don’t have to parboil the lasagna noodles!

Posted on by Standard Reply

A slice of lasagna on a white plate, showcasing layers of pasta, ricotta cheese, meat, and marinara sauce.
Leftover Lasagna – about to be re-heated in the microwave.

I have seen it out there on the internet for years, and I was afraid. Surely the ready-to-bake lasagna noodles are drastically different from the regular ones, right? I’m not talking fresh pasta that needs no prep… I mean the dried boxed stuff that food snobs will tell you is inferior.

I did it. No one died. Everyone seemed to like it. I’ll put my recipe down here first & the shenanigans after that… because Threads gave me some shenanigans. Trigger warning for Nonnas worldwide: I put brown sugar in jarred sauce. Proceed with caution.

Here’s what I did…

Ingredients:

  • (3) 15 oz. containers ricotta cheese
  • (2) 8. oz/2 cups bags shredded Mozzarella/Provolone cheese
  • (1) 2.41 lbs. package 90%/10% ground beef
  • (1) small zucchini, shredded (maybe 2 cups?)
  • (3) 24 oz. jars marinara sauce
  • (1) 1 lb. box Barilla lasagna noodles
  • (2) eggs
  • ½ cup grated Parmesan/Romano cheese
  • shredded parmesan (to taste)
  • fresh curly parsley (to taste)
  • Italian seasoning (to taste)
  • dried parsley (to taste)
  • brown sugar (to taste)
  • jarred minced garlic (to taste)
  • garlic powder (to taste)
  • onion powder (to taste)
  • black pepper (to taste)
  • paprika (to taste)
  • Mrs. Dash table blend (to taste)
  • salt (to taste)

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 375° (Next time I may do 350° for a longer time, but we were in a but of a hurry.)
  2. Brown the beef in a pan on the stove with some of all your spices to taste. (I could/should have included onion here.)
  3. Mix the ricotta, one bag of the shredded cheese, the grated parmesan, a bit of the shredded parmesan, the eggs, fresh parsley, & shredded zucchini in a large bowl, again with all the spices including the garlic.
  4. This filled two 9×13″ glass baking dishes for me. I think I layered them both a bit different. Follow your heart. Put sauce on the bottom, sprinkle in some brown sugar, the dry lasagna noodles, the ricotta mixture, the ground beef, some more shredded cheese, more sauce, more noodles, and just keep going. I did put a very little bit of water in the jars of sauce to swirl around & empty more.. and put that into the dishes too. Sprinkled cheese and made sure there was lots of sauce on top of each.
  5. Cover them tightly with foil & put them in the oven for 50 minutes.
  6. Take out, sprinkle on some more of the shredded parmesan, cook for another 10 minutes.
  7. Pull out, rest for a bit, then serve.
Two glass baking dishes filled with baked lasagna, topped with melted cheese and marinara sauce, resting on a wooden surface.
A serving of lasagna on a white plate, showcasing layers of noodles, marinara sauce, ricotta cheese, and ground beef.

Notes:

  • Like I said, lower & slower next time. Maybe 350° for an hour then uncover & go for another 15 minutes?
  • Carrots may be good in with the ground beef… and/or mushrooms?
  • Maybe spinach in the cheese mixture or as another layer. Let’s get some fiber up in here.
  • I don’t generally like sausage, but if you do it’d be good here for sure.
  • What would you do?

🍝

Readers, let me tell you… people have feelings about calling that strip of pasta a “lasagna noodle.” There is also the fact that “American” lasagna has ricotta, but traditional does not. I was even told that because I added shredded zucchini it is no longer lasagna. I have made it replacing the pasta with long thinly-sliced zucchini planks and still called it lasagna.

People have lost their damn minds. No one knows that food and language evolve over time and across regions and even households?

I did plug my ingredients list into Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, & Copilot to see what they would churn back out, but honestly I didn’t follow through with any of their advice.

I also make wedding soup incorrectly and put beans in chili. Clutch those pearls! Enjoy a meatball club. Hell, join the meatball club!

I look forward to your thoughts about lasagna, your tips, tricks & recipes, and the nuance of semantics involving pasta naming conventions in the comments. How do you layer yours? I feel like I need a way deeper pan. Do you go “traditional” and eschew ricotta? Do you call lasagna noodles lasagna noodles or are you pretentious?

I leave you with the discourse:

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The Meatball Club

Posted on by Standard 4

So, yesterday I made spaghetti with homemade meatballs. Today, I wanted a meatball sub. I was thinking I still had some good buns from New Year’s day. They were not good. I had already melted the butter. The store-brand white bread was calling to me. A sandwich? No, a club.., Something worthy of shenanigans.

The Meatball Club: A double-decker meatball sandwich on toasted white bread, teeming with tasty sauce & melted Gruyere and Swiss cheese.
Behold: The Meatball Club
The Meatball Club: A double-decker meatball sandwich on toasted white bread, teeming with tasty sauce & melted Gruyere and Swiss cheese. (Slightly more from the top.)
Look at that toasty goodness.
The Meatball Club: A double-decker meatball sandwich on toasted white bread, teeming with tasty sauce & melted Gruyere and Swiss cheese. (Cut open diagonally.)
Open up & say “Mmm!”
The Meatball Club: A double-decker meatball sandwich on toasted white bread, teeming with tasty sauce & melted Gruyere and Swiss cheese. (Cut open diagonally, from the top.)
If you don’t cut it diagonally, you’re doing it wrong.

It seemed to be a hit on various social media platforms, so I thought I’d share the love. If you make one, please, post the photo, tag me (@AiXelsyD13 on just about everything), and let me know how it was!

The Meatballs:

I have shared my meatball ingredient secrets a quadruple of times:

I generally don’t measure, and make them different every time. This time I fried them on medium-high in a large pan on the stove & a tiny bit of EVOO.

The Sauce: 

OK, gonna level with you. I am not Italian. This is going to make some people mad. I use jarred sauce. This was the cheap Aldi stuff. Usually we get that or the Prego Three Cheese. I add brown sugar & Parmesan/Romano shake cheese. Sometimes, I even add shopped garlic, onion powder, or “Italian Seasoning.” This time it was just brown sugar and cheese. I don’t measure. I toss a little in with abandon. I like the sweetness & it cuts the acid.

The Club:

Get your stuff…

  • ¼ stick butter
  • Garlic powder
  • Onion powder
  • Parsley or (Italian Seasoning)
  • 6 or so leftover meatballs.
  • Shredded cheese (I had Gruyere & Swiss, but I would probably go for Mozzarella or Provolone, but the stuff I had was fantastic.)
  • “Shake Cheese” I had the cheap Giant Eagle brand Parmesan/Romano blend.
  • Three pieces of white bread.

Do it…

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 390° on the air fryer setting.
  2. Melt the butter w/ garlic powder, onion powder, & parsley to taste in a microwave save bowl in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until it’s a liquid.
  3. Put the bread on a baking dish, brush on the melted butter after a good stir. (I just did the top sides.)
  4. Air fry for 2 minutes, & it gets almost crispy on top, the bottom was nice and toasted.
  5. While you’re doing that nuke the meatballs & sauce on a microwave safe plate for 2 min. (or longer if needed.)
  6. Pull the toast out. (I cut the meatballs in half with a spoon then scooped them and the sauce on to two of the slices of bread.)
  7. Top the meatballs with the shredded cheese.
  8. Put the “shake cheese” on the 3rd slice of bread.
  9. Put it back in on air fry for for 4 or 5 minutes.
  10. Pull it out, assemble it like a tower of gluttony, then slice it diagonally with a giant serrated bread knife for dramatic effect.
  11. Take a photo to share & make people hungry.

That’s it. It took a little bit of time & prep, but it was worth it.

Notes:

  • If you cook & have your own meatball or sauce recipe, of course do that.
  • Use whatever kind of cheese you want, shredded, or sliced, or whatever.
  • I would guess you can use the oven on 375°-ish on a regular setting for a bit longer times, or a counter top air fryer.
  • You could also probably do all of it in the air fryer from cooking the meatballs to melting the butter if you have the appropriate vessels.
  • If you slice it in rectangles and not triangles, you are a psychopath.

Discussion:

  • If you’re out of sausage or sub buns, or hot dog buns, what are you using? Pita? Tortilla? Soft Pretzel? Dinner Rolls? Bisquick? Crescent roll dough?
  • Please, tell me in the comments how wrong it is to use jarred sauce or add brown sugar.
  • Share with me your meatball secrets.
  • Do you like the powdery shake cheese or the fancy stuff?
  • Do you make a forbidden sandwich? What is it?
  • Is this a Meatball Club, or a Meatball Melt?

This is why I had leftover meatballs: