Last week, after 20 years of service, my oven pooped out. So while it’s electrics are being reworked, it will be a crockpot kind of week.
Yesterday, I came across a recipe for a slow cooker lasagna from delish and decided to see if my recipe would work. We tried it last night and it was just as good as if I had baked it in my oven. What I love is that you can pull this together the morning of, or the night before, a busy day and dinner will be all ready to go when you settle in for the night. And you won’t believe this, but you don’t need to boil your noodles ahead of time. I used the regular noodles (not the non-boil kind) and just made sure they were covered with enough sauce and they were perfectly cooked.
Ingredients:
1/2 package of Dececco lasagna noodles
2 packages of Jimmy Dean regular sausage
1 medium onion chopped
1 cup mushrooms (optional…my kids don’t like them but I do)
1 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tablespoon basil
1/2 tablespoon oregano
2 jars of spaghetti sauce (I like Emeril’s vodka sauce)
1 cup cottage cheese (you can use ricotta cheese too, but my family prefers cottage cheese)
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 egg
1 package of mozzarella cheese
Instructions:
- Grease your slow cooker with cooking spray.
- Brown sausage with onion, garlic, and spices.
- In a separate bowl, combine cottage cheese, egg, and parmesan cheese in a separate bowl.
- Spread some of the red sauce on the bottom of the slow cooker.
- Begin to make the lasagna layers in the slow cooker. Start with noodles (you may need to break them to make them fit), then sauce, cottage cheese mixture, and mozzarella cheese. Repeat until your slow cooker is full. I usually top the lasagna with a little more sauce and the rest of the mozzarella cheese. Cover and cook on low for 4 to 5 hours. (Off the record, I think you can let it cook until you’re ready to eat. I had ours in for over 5 hours yesterday and it was just fine.)
Enjoy!
xo
