The Best Lasagna You’ll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality) | Epicurious 101

In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and chef instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to restaurant-quality lasagne at home.

00:00 Intro
00:15 Sauce
07:51 Assemble and bake
11:56 Plating

Director: Parisa Kosari
Director of Photography: Kevin Dynia
Editor: Boris Khaykin
Featuring: Frank Proto
Director of Culinary Production: Kelly Janke
Creative Producer: Parisa Kosari
Culinary Producer: Mallary Santucci
Culinary Associate Producer: Leslie Raney
Associate Producer: Jen McGinity
Production Manager: Janine Dispensa
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Camera Operator: Aaron Snell
Sound Recordist: Z Jadwick
Production Assistant: Albie Smith
Research Director: Ryan Harrington
Culinary Researcher & Recipe Editor: Vivian Jao
Post Production Supervisor: Andrea Farr
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Fynn Lithgow

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– I’m Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor, and today I’m gonna show you how to make lasagna, Frank style. We’re talking cheesy, creamy, melty and delectable lasagna. This is Lasagna 101. [bright guitar strumming] Making the sauce for your lasagna is definitely a process. This is the flavor base of our lasagna.

Basically the heart of the lasagna. We’re gonna build layers. we’re not just gonna dump everything into the pot at once. We’re gonna brown things off, season things as we go, so that we have a really nice balanced sauce at the end. Everyone has their own way of making lasagna.

Mine tends to be rustic, a little more homey. There are lasagnas that you make a bechamel sauce and it’s silky and creamy. But at the end of the day I want this to be super accessible to you out there. I have my pot on the stove. I have been getting it hot.

I’m gonna add some oil. I’m gonna get my pork and I’m gonna season it up. I’m using a pork country-style rib. It’s got a really good fat to meat ratio. I feel that pork and tomatoes really kinda blend well together and it gives your sauce this really nice, mellow taste.

So spread them out in an even layer so it starts to get brown. And at this point, I say this a lot, leave it alone. Once it starts to get brown, it’s gonna unstick from the bottom of the pot and then we can move it around, but give it time.

The pork in the pot’s gonna take five to seven minutes. Remember, we’re building layers of flavor and this is where we wanna be. If you look at that, that is the brown that we want on most of the sides. If they’re not all brown like that, we’re okay.

But try and get some brown like that on at least two or three sides of your pork. So while that’s browning, I’m gonna come over and get my sausage ready. I got sausage in the casing. You just get a paring knife, cut off the casing. I chose spicy Italian sausage

’cause I want a little heat in my sauce. I love the flavor that the chili flakes give. The sausage adds a little more fat, adds a little more flavor. We’re gonna get a little more deeper flavored sauce when we use two types of meat.

All right, so the pork is now getting nice and brown. Look at that. That’s what I want. You can see that the pork is also giving off some fat, and that fat’s gonna help us brown our vegetables. The pork looks like it’s done.

I’m gonna take it out and put it into a bowl, but I’m gonna use a slotted spoon ’cause I wanna leave the fat in the pot. That fat is one of those foundational pieces of our flavor, so don’t get rid of the fat. If you look at the bottom of the pan,

What do I have in there? You guys should know this by now. It’s called fond, F-O-N-D. And that is all the little brown bits and caramelized pieces of pork and the juices on the bottom of the pot. Do not get rid of that. This is, again, part of our flavor base and foundation.

I’m gonna leave the fat in the pot and then I’m gonna take my sausage and I’m gonna get that into the pot. I don’t want large chunks in there, so I’m gonna break it up and start browning this off. My sausage is ready to go.

Even if it’s not fully cooked now I’m not too worried because it’s gonna be in the sauce for a long time and it’s gonna cook through then. So I’m just gonna turn this pot on really low right now and I’m gonna get that same slotted spoon and take the sausage out

And just put it right on top of my browned pork ribs. Try and leave some of those juices and fat in there. Fat equals flavor, people. Don’t be afraid of it. If there’s a little left in there, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Put that aside.

It’s gonna go back into the pot in a minute. Now’s the time where we start to get our vegetables going. Onions go in. Whenever I put onions in the pot, I always add a little bit of salt. Part of that layering of flavor is seasoning throughout the process.

If we add a little salt as we go, we get a nice balanced seasoning to our finished sauce. I want you to take a second and listen to what’s going on in my pot. Yes, I said, listen. [onions sizzling] I hear snap, crackle, pop. I hear sizzling, not hissing.

And that’s what you want. If you hear hissing, that means we’re steaming our onions and not sauteing them. So if all you hear is hissing, turn up your heat, maybe a little more oil. But we wanna hear snapping and crackling and popping and sizzling.

Now’s the time to add some of the more aromatic vegetables. We’re gonna add the carrots and we’re gonna add the celery. I have about two ribs of celery and about two small carrots. And this, I don’t worry about getting caramelized at this point, I just want it to start to soften a little.

The celery and carrots are getting nice and soft and the garlic goes in last in this process because garlic burns really quickly. And we’re gonna cook the garlic till it’s fragrant. I don’t need to brown it. I just want to smell roasty garlic. The garlic is nice and toasty,

And the next thing we’re gonna add is dry white wine. This is gonna give our sauce a nice roundness, a little bit of acidity. It’s also gonna help pick up all of the fond from the bottom of the pot. Those little brown bits are gonna get mixed in with the wine

And make our sauce nice and caramelized. While my wine is cooking down, I’m gonna make a bouquet garni. Sounds fancy, but basically it’s just a bundle of herbs that we tie with some butcher twine. I have basil, I fold the basil into itself a little, and then I twist around, opposite directions,

So that you meet in the middle and you can tie. We bundle it together so it’s easy to remove. It adds flavor to our sauce, but then we can take it out really easily. Throw that in right now and just let our wine continue to cook. The wine’s been happily bubbling away.

If I take a whiff, the alcohol is cooked off and it’s time to move on to the next step. I’m gonna add the tomatoes and I chose a ground peeled tomato. This is a great place to save a little time. If I got whole peeled tomatoes, I’d have to grind them up.

These don’t have any skins in them and they’re the right size for our sauce. All the tomatoes go in, save the cans ’cause we’re gonna rinse them out. And I used to think that this was done just to get the rest of the tomatoes, but there’s another reason for it.

When we add water to our sauce, it gives our sauce a longer cooking time, which gives it more time to develop flavor. If we just add the tomatoes in, it’s gonna reduce too much too quickly. So what I’m gonna do now is let the tomatoes come to a simmer.

I’m gonna add a nice grinding of fresh pepper, a nice pinch of salt, a little bit of chili flake, ’cause we do have hot sausage in there, but I do wanna supplement that with a little more heat. Stir that in, let it come to a simmer. So let’s give it a taste.

You gotta be careful here because this is gonna reduce, but I do think it needs a little more salt. Just a nice pinch, stir it in. The sauce is bubbling away. I’m gonna lower my heat from high to medium and I’m gonna add all the meat back with all of the juices.

Give it a stir. You can probably go a little lower on the heat, to kinda medium low. Let it cook low and slow for about an hour and a half until everything comes together, the pork gets tender, and then we can make our lasagna.

My sauce has been on for about an hour and a half. If you look at it, it’s got a really nice deep red color, a little sheen of oil on top, which is always nice. And the pork is nice and tender. So what we’re gonna do now

Is we’re gonna remove that bouquet garni, it’s done its work, it’s given its flavor up for the sauce. And we’re also gonna remove our pork so that we can kinda just chop it up and shred it, so go through the sauce. When you cut into that lasagna,

You wanna get the perfect bite every time. And by shredding the pork, we’re allowing that to happen. The pork has been cooking long enough in the sauce that we really don’t need to do much to shred it, it falls apart really nice. And this goes right back into the sauce.

Now I’m gonna take this basil and shred it up and add it to the sauce. A lot of times when you’re cooking things like this for a long time, they can get kinda heavy and like kinda stodgy, and the basil just kinda gives it a little lift towards the end.

My sauce looks really good, but I am gonna adjust the consistency a little with some water. I’m using dry pasta for this, so the pasta’s gonna soak up a lot of sauce and I don’t want it to be too wet or too dry,

So a little liquidy on my sauce is where I wanna be. We’ve taken all this time to build the layers in this sauce and it’s totally paid off. It’s time to make our lasagna. [bright guitar strumming] It’s time to assemble lasagna and most of the hard work is done already.

We’ve made our sauce. Assembly can be a lot of fun, but it’s also a crucial step in getting the right consistency. You don’t wanna add too much sauce, you don’t wanna add too little cheese. Remember, we want that perfect bite all the way through. The first step to layering our lasagna

Is you wanna put a nice bit of sauce on the bottom. We don’t want it sticking to the bottom or drying out on the bottom so the sauce goes down. Lasagna already takes a lot of time and effort. I like to use dry pasta because it’s simple and easy.

There are some pasta products out there called oven ready, which are no-cook pastas. I’m using regular pasta. I have seasoned my sauce. I have adjusted the consistency. The pasta’s gonna soak up all that good flavor. It’s gonna go right into the pasta instead of just salted water.

When I’m layering my lasagna, I like to put sauce on the pasta itself, right? So it’s gonna be sauce, pasta, sauce, and then the cheese, ’cause I want the sauce to soak into the pasta. Next step, we’re gonna add some of our grated cheese. I have pecorino and Parmesan.

I like the sharpness of pecorino, I like the nuttiness of Parmesan. I’m going to add some shredded mozzarella. I’m using a low moisture mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella has a lot of liquid. I don’t want extra liquid in there. And then some ricotta. And with the ricotta, I dab it on, right?

This will spread out and melt a little, but I just like to put dabs around. So we’re just building those layers of flavor. And when I use all these cheeses, it give me that nice balance between creamy and acidic. And then another layer of pasta.

I am going to push down just a little, right? I want this to be a little compact. I don’t want it to be like light and fluffy. I want it to be nice and dense. So if the pasta overlaps a little, that’s fine. And then another layer of sauce.

Remember, the pasta should be touching the sauce. And then we go again with everything else. And you notice that I’m getting into the corners as well. Make sure we’re spreading this evenly and it’s not just a lump of cheese in the middle, that each corner piece is gonna have some cheese flavor too.

And for our last layer, I’m just gonna add the grated cheeses. I don’t want the ricotta on top there because ricotta tends to dry out and it’s gonna get crumbly. I leave the ricotta inside where it’s gonna stay nice and moist and not on the top. Before I put it in the oven,

I’m gonna put it onto a sheet tray or a cookie sheet. You can see that our sauce is kind of like almost overflowing, so if it overflows, it goes onto the tray, not into my oven. Last thing we need to do is cover this with foil.

I wanna keep a lot of the moisture in there and I kinda want it to steam just a little ’cause I didn’t cook the pasta. So we’ll put this on nice and loose. We’re gonna throw this in a 350 degree oven, for about 30 minutes.

Remove the foil and then go for another 30 minutes to crisp up the edges, and then we’ll be ready to taste. The lasagna’s been in the oven for 30 minutes. We’re gonna remove the foil to allow our lasagna to crisp up and the cheese to melt really nice.

You’ll notice that a lot of the juice has leaked out onto the tray and that’s kinda sacrificial juice. It’s probably gonna stick to the tray. But that’s why it’s important to have it so it doesn’t leak all over your oven. The foil on top has allowed my pasta to soak up that liquid

And my cheese to steam a little and get melty. It’s going back into the oven for about 30 minutes, and that’s gonna get nice and crispy and brown. I took the foil off the lasagna, put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes, and now it’s out.

Look at it, it’s gorgeous. Brown, cheesy deliciousness. But I don’t want you to cut into it right away. It’s extremely important to note that you need to let this rest for a minimum of 30 minutes before you cut it, otherwise it’s a sloppy mess. What’s great about lasagna

Is that you can take it in this form, you can refrigerate it, you can cut it up and freeze it. You can pretty much save it and serve it any way you want it, but you have to let it rest before you cut it. [bright guitar strumming]

My lasagna has rested for 30 minutes. We’ve given it time for everything to kinda meld together. Let’s cut into this. All right, here we go. Make sure it’s sliced all the way through. I usually run the knife along the outside edge just to make sure that it’s free.

Get under there. Oh my goodness. That is just a slice of happiness. We took our time to layer our sauce on top and on bottom of the pasta. And if you look at it, all that time has paid off. We have a beautiful layered lasagna

With a little bit of everything in each bite. I’m gonna make a mess, but I’m gonna get in there and just take a nice chunk. [bright music] It’s cheesy, it’s meaty, it’s melty and creamy. It has a little acidity from those tomatoes.

The pasta still has a little bite. It’s not soft and mushy. It holds together really well, and it’s beautiful. It takes time, it takes technique, but it is worth every moment you put into it. Put it in front of the people you love and they will love you back.