Yummy Recipe: Crock Pot Lasagna

I decided to finally try this crock pot lasagna recipe people have been telling me about.  Like so many other people, sometimes just getting a meal on the table is a struggle, so I’m always looking for new ways to use my crock pot that won’t absolutely dry out the meal (that’s been my experience with my crock pot in the past).

A lasagna seemed safe enough – chances are I wouldn’t completely dry out a lasagna, right?

The catch with this recipe though is that it’s not really something that you can just throw together quickly, turn your crock pot on, and go to work for 8 hours and forget about it.  Like many other slow cooker recipes, there is some prep work.  It takes about 4-6 hours to cook, so it’s a good thing to do when you’re home – start it around 1pm and you’ll have dinner ready by 5pm.

The up-side to this recipe – even though it may not be an ‘easy’ weekday recipe – is that it makes a huge amount of lasagna.  So I plan on freezing half and we’ll have two or maybe even three meals out of the effort.  Love that!

The recipe I decided to try was a hybrid between a Food.com recipe that a colleague of mine shared with me and a recipe in my sister’s Idiot’s Guide Slow Cooker Cooking.  Why a hybrid?  Good question.  I do that often and I don’t know why.  Maybe cause then it feels like I’m throwing a little imagination into it!

So, here’s “my” recipe:

Ingredients:

• Approx. 2 lbs of ground beef and italian sausage
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 29 oz tomato sauce
• 6 oz tomato paste
• 1 cup of water
• 8-10 lasagna sheets (oven ready or not… I actually used whatever I had left in my pantry, and it was a mix of both)
• 16 oz cottage cheese
• 3 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
• 3 big slices of provolone cheese
• parmesan cheese for the toping

Directions:

1. In a large sauce pan, brown the onion, salt, ground beef and italian sausage.
2. Stir in the tomato sauce, tomato paste, water, salt and oregano.  Mix well to combine.
3. Scoop a small about of sauce on the bottom of the slow cooker just to coat the bottom.
4. Place 3 lasagna sheets on the bottom, on top of the first layer of cause, breaking the sheets however you have to to make them fit.
5. Top with 1/4 of the cottage cheese, 1/4 of the sauce and about 1 cup of mozzarella.
6. Layer 3 more lasagna sheets, top with 1/4 of the cottage cheese, 1/4 of the sauce and the provolone cheese slices.
7. Layer 3 more lasagna sheet, top with the rest of the cottage cheese, mozzarella and sprinkle some parmesan cheese to top it all off.
8. Cover and cook on low for 4-6 hours.

Results:

Absolutely delish!  My husband really enjoyed it too and that says a lot!  I will make this again, and like I said earlier, love that it makes a really big batch, now we’ve got another meal ready to go when we feel like lasagna again.