Crock Pot Lasagna
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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.
Fail miserably in taking the final picture because you are hungry and just want to eat…
Ingredients
- 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
Instructions
- 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.
Nutrition
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!
🙂
What should it be??? Lasagna???
Sorry but it’s a completely different recipe. Anyway…hope it’s good.
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!
My mother says eye-talian too!
Sorry Christy my son fell out of a second story window. He was pretty injured and is now on the mend.
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
I made this and it was AWFUL! the noodles were like mush. We could have taken our false teeth out (if we them) and eaten this. What went wrong?
Honey, I’m sorry it didn’t turn out for you, sounds like it cooked too long. I’m just trying to get over reading your comment right now….you really should write a blog. As I was reading I couldn’t help but have a mental image while following your sentence…
Thanks Christy for the advice, I don’t think my family will let me try this recipe again though, they said I was really off my game that night. I will however try another one of your recipes real soon. I will let you know how that one turns out. I truly enjoy reading all your stories about your family. I would really like to start a blog but not sure how to do that. Have a great Thankgiving!
hey Lisa!
You know, I started off the easy way, just go to blogger.com. It is completely free and you can kind of get your feet wet with no commitment. I found that the more I got into it, it was kind of like a stepping stone to prepare me for the next phase, which was moving to what SouthernPlate.com is now.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving too and so glad to have you as part of the Family!
Gratefully,
Christy
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!