I tried lasagna recipes from Ina Garten, Ree Drummond, and Giada DeLaurentiis, and the winner used cottage cheese instead of ricotta
Terri Peters
- My family loves lasagna, so I tried recipes from Ina Garten, Ree Drummond, and Giada DeLaurentiis.
- I thought DeLaurentiis' dish lacked flavor, and Garten's was a little too cheesy.
Lasagna is a favorite meal in my house.
As a busy mom with one pretty picky eater, I find lasagna to be a straightforward dish with familiar ingredients that pleases my family.
I have a standard family recipe I always use. But I recently tested out lasagna recipes from celebrity chefs Giada DeLaurentiis, Ina Garten, and Ree Drummond.
Here's how the unique recipes stacked up.
Garten’s recipe asks for interesting ingredients, like goat cheese.
Garten's easy turkey lasagna is a simple take on the standard recipe with a few surprising ingredients — namely, goat cheese for the filling.
Her recipe calls for sweet Italian turkey sausage, but since I had trouble finding that at any grocery stores near me, I used regular ground turkey and seasoned it with Italian seasoning, red-pepper flakes, and a bit of sugar.
This base sauce has ground turkey and crushed tomatoes.
After seasoning the ground turkey, making the sauce was pretty straightforward.
When I simmered onion, fresh herbs, canned crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste together, I had a pretty standard, meaty sauce to work with.
Garten's recipe combineds goat cheese and ricotta for a flavorful mixture.
I'd never made lasagna with goat cheese before, but Garten's recipe meant I stirred 3 to 4 ounces of it into 15 ounces of ricotta.
The combination was tart and flavorful. The flavors of the goat cheese really stood out in the dish, especially with the lightness of the ground turkey.
The chef then tops it all off with even more cheese.
I really liked that Garten's recipe includes fresh mozzarella cheese.
So many lasagnas lean on grated or shredded mozzarella, so slicing up a fresh log was a nice touch.
Garten's lasagna would be the winner if I were giving awards for the cheesiness.
Garten's cheese-laden lasagna was a dairy lover's dream.
The goat cheese gave that layer some extra tang and flavor, and the fresh mozzarella provided layers of thick, cheesy goodness that made for a great cheese pull.
DeLaurentiis’ lasagna recipe calls for lots of spinach.
DeLaurentiis' classic Italian lasagna made me question the standard recipe I've been following for years.
I'm used to ground meat, cheeses, and tomato sauce. But DeLaurentiis' recipe requires 20 ounces of frozen spinach and a mixture of white béchamel sauce and homemade tomato sauce.
I cooked the meat separately from the sauce.
I was puzzled by DeLaurentiis' method, but who am I to argue with a master of Italian cuisine?
To assemble the chef's lasagna, I made a béchamel sauce and a standard tomato sauce and then stirred the two together.
DeLaurentiis also said to keep the ground beef separate, layering it into the dish on its own.
I needed a lot of ricotta and eggs for DeLaurentiis’ lasagna.
Before assembling, I followed the instructions and stirred together three large eggs and 1 ½ pounds of ricotta cheese.
I'm not a fan of a lasagna that's heavy on the egg flavor, but her recipe wasn't overly eggy in the end.
I think the large amount of spinach detracted from the dish's overall flavor.
There was a lot of spinach in DeLaurentiis' recipe, and there wasn't much seasoning to add flavor to it.
The spinach was my least favorite ingredient in any of the lasagna recipes, and I'm usually a big fan of the leafy green.
DeLaurentiis’ lasagna took the longest and was our least favorite.
I was disappointed by DeLaurentiis' lasagna, mostly because it wasn't very flavorful.
I don't think the complicated recipe's many steps paid off in the end.
Drummond's recipe calls for 3 pounds of meat.
Drummond doesn't mess around when it comes to protein-filled meals.
Her simple lasagna recipe calls for 2 pounds of ground beef and a pound of hot breakfast sausage.
The chef also included cottage cheese (instead of traditional ricotta) and tons of fresh herbs, like basil and parsley.
Drummond’s sauce was full of ground meat and fresh herbs.
I eat a high-protein diet, so I was immediately drawn to Drummond's meat-heavy lasagna sauce.
Like Garten, her recipe relies on canned tomatoes and tomato paste to make up the rest of the sauce, along with lots of chopped, fresh herbs.
The recipe requires cottage cheese instead of ricotta.
Cottage cheese is a staple for meeting my daily protein goals, but I'd never had it in lasagna before.
Drummond completely did away with traditional ricotta, and in the end, I enjoyed the flavor the cottage cheese brought to the meal.
My son (the picky eater) didn't even notice the switch.
Drummond’s meaty lasagna had the most flavor, hands down.
Tossing 3 pounds of meat into a lasagna felt like overkill, but I ended up loving it.
Lasagna can get carb- and dairy-heavy, so I really liked how protein-packed Drummond's version was.
Of the three dishes, Drummond’s is the one I’d absolutely make again.
Drummond's meaty lasagna was my favorite.
I would definitely make her recipe again — in fact, it just might replace the family recipe I always default to.
Drummond's lasagna was perfectly cheesy and flavorful, had the right ratio of sauce to noodles, and was incredibly simple to assemble.
Best of all, it was a hit with my entire family.
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