Yve Eats: Turkey Pesto Lasagna

Immediately after the first round of ratatouille, my mom put in a request for lasagna. She really wasted no time. It certainly made my and Mikaela's job easier when it came to deciding what to make next. I set out to find a good recipe aka looking up a bunch of different recipes and taking bits and pieces from each one to build the ultimate lasagna. It's not as easy as it sounds since everybody seems to have their own "best" and "most delicious" way of making it. It took a lot of cross-referencing, but I'm quite satisfied with the results and everybody who has gotten a taste seems to agree.

Lotsa sauce!

Initially, when I was brainstorming with my mom, we decided on doing a turkey and spinach lasagna. The original plan was to get a two pack of turkey from Costco. One for the lasagna and one for a different recipe my mom has been wanting to make. Going off of that, I thought spinach would be a nice addition to get some color in the dish. Now I had a starting point for my research. I started out searching for specifically spinach and turkey lasagna recipes but I wasn't really liking what I was finding. Running into dead ends wasn't entirely unproductive. I noticed a consistency in all these recipes; things like the size of the baking dish, the amount of meat, and the amount of ricotta cheese. I noted those things and realized I could just get a good lasagna recipe and substitute.

Mikaela's ricotta cheese ball

As I progressed in my lasagna researching journey, I began to get the impression that this dish is a difficult one to make. It's easy to end up with a wet, sloppy lasagna, it's very labor-intensive, and I should expect to spend the whole day in the kitchen. Thankfully, I didn't experience any of these problems because I recruited help and I took some precautions when it came to keeping the lasagna dry such as drying the ricotta and blanching the mushrooms before adding them to the sauce. These are things I never would've thought of myself. The tip for the mushrooms came from my mom and I learned the ricotta tip from the blog post that I got the recipe from.

Now That's What I Call Lasagna,
Vol. 1

This is where the Aspiring Small Town Girl comes in. The main reason why I chose this recipe was because she provided a tip that I hadn't seen anywhere else. That proved to me that she had plenty of experience and maybe her claims of her recipe being "the best damn lasagna on earth" might very well be true. One of the steps in her recipe had me mixing pesto in with the ricotta which is a great idea to give the ricotta some extra flavor. It helped that we had some pesto on hand and ready to go. That's when I decided to drop the spinach idea. Obviously I substituted turkey for her beef and pork blend, but I wouldn't count that out. I may try this recipe with pork one day (we have a beef non-eater in our house) but it is fantastic with turkey. Another change I made was my addition of mushrooms. Other recipes I'd seen had chopped up some mushrooms and put it in the sauce. That's the kind of thing that I'm about. The final adjustment I made was one I didn't even realize I made until later. The recipe calls for approximately 48 ounces of marinara sauce but, by mistake, I used less than that and my baking dish still overflowed a little bit in the oven. I don't know how deep a standard 9 x 13 baking dish is but mine obviously is not deep enough. I've made lasagna twice now once with 46 ounces and another with 44 ounces. There was overflow both times. Despite the mess, I don't think it'd be smart to go any less than that because a dry lasagna is the last thing you want.

Here's the recipe with my revisions:

Turkey Pesto Lasagna

Serves: 6 people

Look at the layers! (x)

Ingredients:

1 lb ground turkey 

9 lasagna noodles

3 Tbsp Italian herb blend

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

2 mushrooms, chopped (the amount of mushrooms is up to you)

4 garlic cloves, diced, divided

~48 oz marinara sauce

16 oz ricotta cheese, dried

 4 Tbsp pesto

1 egg

1/2 cup shredded parmesan

3 cups shredded mozzarella 

Instructions:

1.  About an hour before cooking, spread ricotta on a plate and place paper towels over it to absorb moisture. I found that dabbing it is more time efficient.
2. Preheat oven to 375F.
3. Prepare lasagna noodles according to package directions.
4. In a large sauce pan throw in the chopped onions, chopped mushrooms, TWO diced garlic cloves, and the turkey.
5. When the turkey is done cooking and crumbled up, add the marinara sauce and let it warm up. 
6. Simmer until you are ready to layer.
7. In a bowl, mix the ricotta, pesto, parmesan, egg, and the other two diced garlic cloves together.
8. Lasagna, assemble! In a 9 x 13 baking dish, lay a thin layer of sauce.
9. Add your first layer of noodles and cover with sauce.
10. Generously sprinkle mozzarella (about a cup) over the sauce.
11. Add your second layer of noodles!
12. Spread your ricotta mixture evenly.
13. Repeat the mozzarella sprinkling.
14. Time for your final layer of noodles! Cover with the rest of your sauce.
15. Cover the entire dish with foil, cut some vents, and bake for 30 minutes.
16. Uncover your lasagna, use your final cup of mozzarella to create that beautiful cheesy look, add a bit of parmesan if you so desire, and pop it back into the oven uncovered for 20-30 minutes. 

I didn't even realize this until I went to "copy" the recipe from Aspiring Small Town Girl that her blog post was published on my birthday this year! Destiny has played its card. Who knew there was a subliminal reason for me to like this recipe so much? Whenever I order lasagna from a restaurant, it's almost always nearly unbearably salty. That is not a problem with this recipe. There's nothing better than a fresh, homemade lasagna. I also got to control how much cheese went into it. I'm not here to skimp. How do you make your lasagna? Any tips that have the potential to change the game? I swear that ricotta tip saved my lasagna from being a slipping, sliding mess. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this lasagna recipe and also what you'd like to see in upcoming Yve Eats! There's a whole world of food (that I can attempt to make) out there.


Talk to you soon!

xo, Yvette