Crock Pot Lasagna – It’s Italian, y’all!
I love how my grandmother says Italian. God love her, she has never known how to pronounce that word. Instead, it comes out “Eye-talian”, as in “That Eye-talian food sure is good!”.
Well, this is one of my Eye-talian recipes. It’s very easy (you don’t even boil the noodles!), especially when you have your meat already browned and in the freezer just waiting to be tossed in. This is also my most requested recipe. I don’t know how many times I’ve printed this one out over the years.
It yields the most delicious lasagna I have ever tasted, rich with cheeses and meat. Beware though, it feeds a crowd! Even with a family of four, this is easily two meals.
You’ll need: Spaghetti sauce, Mozzarella cheese, Cottage cheese, lasagna noodles, and ground beef.
You don’t have to get oven ready lasagna noodles, just regular ones work great with this recipe.
I always use store bought spaghetti sauce, always. My mother says “Those companies spent years and years and put thousands of dollars into developing the perfect sauce, who are we not to use it?”. That’s wisdom if I ever did hear it!
You can use browned italian sausage if you wanna be fancy here, but you have to call it Eye-talian sausage, that’s m’rule. ~grins~
And a layer of noodles. Notice how my first layer of noodles went in a different direction of this layer. You should always do that with your noodles when you make lasagna, criss cross your layers. One this way, the other that way. This helps your lasagna hold its shape and look prettier when you cut it. However, at no point in this post have I said this lasagna was going to be pretty. I said it was going to be good.
Crock Pot lasagna won’t come out in a perfect square but it will still look great, not that anyone is going to notice because they are going to start scarfing it down as soon as it hits their plate. Therefore, don’t serve this if the queen comes to dinner because it brings out the worst table manners.
Now, hopefully you’ve noticed a pattern here because I want you to repeat with another layer of cheese, sauce, beef, repeating until you have just enough sauce left to cover the top. We want to end in sauce.
Cook on low for six to eight hours. *Anytime you cook in a crock pot, cooking on low will have it done in 6-8 hours and cooking on high will have it done in 3-4. That is always the rule and it always works because I said so.
So anytime you see a recipe that has you cooking on low 6-8, just cut that time in half if you cook it on high. Any recipe which says to cook on low can be cooked on high – because I said so.
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Fail miserably in taking the final picture because you are hungry and just want to eat…
Crock Pot Lasagna
1 box lasagna noodles
16 oz cottage cheese
2 lbs ground beef, cooked and drained
2 – 26 ounce cans or jars of spaghetti sauce
2 cups mozzarella
In bowl, stir two cheeses together until well combined. Spoon a layer of sauce in bottom of crock pot. Sprinkle small amount of ground beef over top. Top with a layer of noodles, breaking to make them fit. Be sure to alternate which way the noodles go with each layer. Top noodles with a layer of cheese. Repeat process until all ingredients are used, ending with sauce.
Cover and cook on low 6-8 hours.
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Oh, my! I can’t wait for this one; I’m making it this weekend for sure! I’m so glad I found this blog!!
Christy… I’m on it! You can trust me! Me and my crock pot will do this one justice.. I’ll just toss some Texas Toast in the oven… and the Eye-Talian food will be on the table!
OH YUM!!! And it is easy!!! Terri and I LOVE the crockpot!
I will definately be giving this one a try!!!!
Treva
Yummy! I will be trying this for sure! Love this blog:)
LOL! Have y’all noticed that everyone who has commented so far on this has names starting with “T”?
Tammy: Thank you so much! I am glad YOU found this blog! Let me know how it turns out!
Terri: I knew I could count on you! ~winks and grins~ I hope you like it as much as we do! You DO get bonus points for pronouncing Eye-Talian correctly, by the way!
Treva- You got a pic! YAY! I have a few more crock pot recipes I’m gonna put up just for you and Terri! Stay tuned!
Tracee: I love that you read this blog!!! Thank you so much and let me know how it turns out! Appreciate you commenting!!
@}~~I LOVE COMMENTS! ~~{@
OMG rolling on the floor laughing because I said SO !LOL I love this recipe i am doing it.
I had a few meals delivered from friends this week but after that I will try it for sure! I even have the ingredients!
Oh and I use sausage instead of hamburger! (: woohoo!
Fabulous!!
Our house has been so hot, I’ve decided not to use the oven AT ALL! So that meant no lasagne. BUt not now! I’m trying this today!
Thanks.
Yesterday we did pizza on the grill! That was great too, and no hot oven!
Pinky: I have been worried about you! It just occurred to me yesterday that I had not seen you around in a while and now you comment! YAY! PINKY LIVES!!!
Hehe!
Ooh, you’re getting fancy – SAUSAGE!! Keep in mind I am close enough to actually show up and swipe some of that !
Christy
MaryLu – YAY! YOU LIKE IT!!! I know just what you mean about heat outside and the oven. I have actually seriously slowed down on biscuits and hoe cake just because I have to get the oven so dern hot to make them! Oh lord, there is no cooking season like the winter time!!
Christy
Sorry Christy my son fell out of a second story window. He was pretty injured and is now on the mend.
My mother says eye-talian too!
Pinky: I am so sorry to hear that! Thank goodness he is okay!! I bet your heart stopped. Get better soon pinky’s boy!!!
Anonymous: I like your Mama already! Welcome to Southern Plate!
What should it be??? Lasagna???
Sorry but it’s a completely different recipe. Anyway…hope it’s good.
I am personally grateful that there are so many variations on recipes, where would food be without variety?????
What if a casserole had to follow one particular recipe to be a casserole? What if a cake had to follow one particular recipe to be a cake or have only one type of icing?
Of course this is lasagna, silly! LOL If its different from your recipe then that is GREAT!!! We can have your recipe, then my recipe, then my mothers, then our neighbors, and have four entirely different meals! I think its wonderful!!
I like my recipe, but I bet I’d like yours as well!
This lasagna sounds great, and the convience of the cock pot to is even better. I will be making this, this weekend…!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Southern plate!!! I am so happy I found this blog. I actually have this recipe in my crock pot now and am very anxious to give it a try. I did substitute the cottage with ricotta and put eye-talian seasoning on my beef as I fried it up. I am so glad you shared this recipe with us!!!
My seven year old daughter and I made this before we left for Christmas Eve service at church. All three of my girls devoured it and asked for seconds. I will NEVER make normal lasagna again.
So I made this last week and used ricotta instead of the cottage cheese, browned my 4 lbs of meat with my onions and about 20 garlic cloves (if you couldn’t tell, i probably have the largest pieces of cookware imaginable) and threw it in to my giant crock and said bon appetite…. it usually takes me foreverrrrr to make my wonderful lasagna, but this was awesome!!!
I made this today. Very easy to put together. I added some fresh garlic and a smidge of melted butter to the cheese mixture and used our favorite sauce- Paul Newman Marinara; all beef, no sausage, and Kraft 5-cheese Italian blend. The finished product reminded me very much of Chef Boyardee lasagna (my daughter agreed.. her and I are the only ones who’ve eaten CB), but better. Tasty! I cooked it for 6 hours on low, but the pasta was a bit softer than I like.. I think next time I’ll shorten the cooking time.
[...] here’s the recipe: crock pot lasagna by southernplate.com [...]
Made it this morning. Cant wait to try it this afternoon!
Yumm, looks good. I love an authentic lasagne, but there are so many variations, and since I love cheese and tomatoes with pasta, it’s all good
Newbie to your site & loooove it! I just tried this last night & it’s soooo good! Even better the next day (eating this for lunch @ work as I type!).