Yummy and easy recipes!: Better Beef Lasagna

It's been a while!! I've been rather lazy and have been cooking the same recipes for dinner... I know, how boring is that? Oh well. I found an amazing recipe for Beef Lasagna (less fatty version) and decided to try it out! This was my first experience making Lasagna and I even cooked the noodles myself instead of cheating and using the 'ready bake' ones at the store :-p

Here is the link to the recipe I found (there is even a video : http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/better-beef-lasagna-recipe/index.html

I opted out of the mushrooms and the spinach.

I'm just going to post the pictures i took and brief steps. Please print and follow the instructions on the recipe and use this as a visual giude :-)

I started by boiling the noodles first. I didn't have a large enough pot to boil all 15 strips of lasagna noodles, so I had to boil the first half, lay them out, and then do the second half and lay those out as well. I put about a teaspoon of EVOO in the water before it started boiling - this keeps the noodles from sticking together while they boil.

When you get ready to drain the noodles in your strainer, drip a few drizzles of EVOO over the noodles and shake them around gently, this will keep them not sticky. Then you will lay them out nice and neat like onto wax paper (wax paper will not stick to the noodles) making sure the noodles don't touch or overlap on the wax paper.

Set aside 4 cups high quality Marinera sauce (I used Bertolli Marinera) and made the Ricotta, pepper, salt and nutmeg mixture, referred to as the 'CHEESE MIXTURE' in the recipe.

Yummmmmm!

I browned my 93% lean beef and then poured water over to cover it and boiled it (this removes alot of the fat/grease in the beef). Once it started boiling, I drained it in the strainer and returned it to the pan and added the 2 cups of sauce to it to simmer for 3 minutes.

Pour one cup of sauce as the first layer to coat the bottom of the dish.

Add your lasagna noodles over the bottom sauce layer so that they are touching but NOT overlapping.

Then add the 'cheese mixure' and spread evenly and gently so you don't accidentally mix the layers.

Add another layer of noodles, again, touching but not overlapping eachother.

Adding HALF of the meat/sauce mixture. Since it's 1lb of beef and 2 cups of sauce, half of he portion ended up being 1 1/3; if you want to get technical and measure everything out like i did.

Add another layer of noodles.

Add the rest of the 'cheese mixture' as your next layer (i forgot to get a photo of it) and then layer another layer of lasagna noodles.
Add the rest of your meat/sauce mixture to cover the noodles as evenly as you can.