Our family loves pasta — specifically lasagna — and I love that when I make lasagna, we have enough for another full meal of leftovers later in the week.
The one and only thing I do NOT like about lasagna is boiling the noodles. For starters, we really don’t have a pan large enough to fit the noodles, and they sometimes break as I try to gently ease them into the boiling water.
Also, if I don’t stir the noodles, they stick together and get clumpy, but if I do stir them, they rip or tear. And even if I don’t rip or tear them during the boiling process, I’m almost guaranteed to rip or tear them when I’m trying to pull them out of the pot.
If you don’t want to boil or soak your lasagna noodles, there’s always no-boil lasagna noodles. These oven-ready noodles are ready to assemble with no precooking involved, they tend to be thinner and tenderize by absorbing liquid while baking.
Making no-boil lasagna is easy. Here are 2 things you need to do to make no-boil lasagna:
When you assemble your lasagna, add water to your tomato sauce at the ratio of 1 part water to 2 parts of tomato sauce. For example, if you are using 1 jar of tomato sauce, mix this tomato sauce with 1/2 jar of water.
I used to really dislike boiling lasagna noodles until I discover a way to make no-boil lasagna. You can make no-boil lasagna with any kind of lasagna noodles. Some lasagna noodles are labeled “no-boil lasagna noodles”, but I make no-boil lasagna even with regular lasagna noodles that are not labeled “no-boil”.
Who needs the hassle of boiling noodles for lasagna when you can make no-boil lasagna! No-boil lasagna is the only kind of lasagna I make these days, and there is absolutely no difference in taste between no-boil lasagna and conventionally cooked lasagna.
1) Soak lasagna noodles in the hot water 2) Add extra water to your tomato sauce
Boiling the noodles is definitely my least favorite part of making lasagna.
I used to buy the no-boil noodles… until I realized I was paying more for a smaller package, AND that the instructions were exactly the same except the no-boil noodles required double the sauce.
This got my frugal brain churning, and a couple years ago I decided to see if making lasagna with regular noodles and doubling the sauce would give me the same results as using the more expensive no-boil noodles and doubling the sauce.
To my surprise, it seemed to work pretty well!
Then I did a little bit of research, and I realized that the only difference between regular lasagna noodles and no-boil lasagna noodles is that no-boil lasagna noodles are pre-boiled for a bit before drying — otherwise, they are exactly the same.
After tweaking my favorite lasagna recipes a few different times, I landed on a method that seems to work extremely well for me… it easily cuts 15 minutes (and lots of frustration) off my lasagna prep time!
In the interest of full disclosure, I feel that not boiling the noodles first leaves more of a “starchy” taste to the meal — but no one in our household seems to mind.
That said, if I was making this for company or to bring to someone else, I would probably boil the noodles first.
Do you have to boil lasagna noodles before baking?
FAQ
Should I soak dried lasagne sheets?
Can you use non oven ready lasagna noodles?
How do you soften ready to bake lasagna noodles?
Do oven ready lasagna noodles expand?