I’m not a vegetarian, but I do enjoy meatless meals and occasionally like to make a meatless lasagne using ricotta cheese instead of ground beef to bulk up the protein count. Unfortunately my photos for this dish aren’t terrible great – thems the breaks when you take your photos in the evening without the use of extra lighting besides the ceiling light. Le sigh.

Even without photos that to the dish justice, it’s easy to see why lasagne is always a crowd favourite, and even the meat eaters in your house will eat this one without complaint!

Because there is no ground meat to help keep the lasagne together, I like to add shredded carrot to this recipe as it acts like a bit of a binder to keep it from falling apart when you serve it. Also, it’s important to let this type of lasagne set for 10-15 minutes after taking it out of the oven or else it will turn into a (tasty) lasagne soup.

Meatless Lasagne

Ingredients

Oven Ready Lasagne Noodles (12-14)
5-6 large mushrooms
3 cloves garlic
2 medium carrots, shredded
1 tsp each of dried basil, oregano, and parsley
1½ cans tomato sauce (13 ounce cans)
⅔ cup ricotta cheese
2 cups mozzarella, shredded

Instructions

Chop mushrooms and garlic and cook in large frying pan with shredded carrots over medium high heat.

Once cooked thoroughly add parsley, basil and oregano and cook for a couple minutes then add tomato sauce, turn down to low.

Use a large spoon to add about ⅓ cup of tomato mixture to bottom of a loaf pan. Top with 2 lasagne noodles.

Add more tomato mixture (about ½-2/3 cup), top with a sprinkle of shredded cheese and add two more lasagne noodles.

Evenly spread ⅓ cup of ricotta over the top noodles, then top the ricotta with a small amount of the tomato mixture. Top with 2 more noodles.

Continue adding tomato mixture, cheese, 2 noodles, ricotta, tomato mixture, two noodles.

Next top with remaining tomato mixture (you should have just enough to cover the top noodles, if you have a lot of the tomato mixture go ahead and make another layer of tomato/cheese/noodles) and then top with remaining cheese.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, turn off the oven and turn the broiler on high for 2 minutes to brown the top.

Let the lasagne cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.