Monday, October 4, 2010

Lasagne Roll Ups

After making my homemade tomato sauce, I was inspired to make Lasagna Roll Ups! Italian food is a major favorite around here. The only drawback (for me, anyway) is that it's usually fairly time consuming to prepare....such as lasagna. This is my cheater and quick version that always goes over BIG!

First, brown your ground meat of choice, I used beef but turkey works great too. You can add onion but since I have one picky eater than can detect the smallest molecule of onion, I refrain.
Then add your tomato/marinara sauce to the meat and allow to simmer on low while you cook the lasagna noodles.
Only cook for about half the suggested time as you want them to be VERY al dente. Otherwise, if overcooked they will fall apart. Once they're cooking, prepare your filling.
For the filling I used one container of ricotta cheese, one egg, a handful (precise, I know) of cheese - anything works however I prefer a blend of Asiago, Romano and Parmesan, basil, parsley, salt & pepper. Mix well.

Drain your noodles and rinse in cold water. Drain again. Then you will take a small amount of the sauce/meat mixture and coat the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan prior to adding your roll ups.
Once cooled take you lasagna noodles and put a spoonful of the cheese mixture onto each on and spread it from end to end on the noodle. Roll it up and layer into the pan.
Repeat until all noodles are complete.
Take the remainder of the sauce on spoon it over the pan of roll ups.
Cover the top with cheese of your choosing, here I've used shredded mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella slices are an especially extravagant touch as well.
Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees or until heated through and nicely browned on top.
Yum! It's a crowd pleaser for sure. This is also one of those dishes that tastes even better the next day!
If you're lucky enough to have that happen {wink}

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