Lasagne: ragù simmered ninety minutes, béchamel, and sheets that cook themselves
Real lasagne rests on two sauces and patience: a meat ragù simmered an hour and a half with milk and pancetta, and a béchamel cooked looser than instinct suggests. That looseness is not a mistake but the water the dry pasta sheets will drink in the oven. One dish for eight, a quarter of an hour of rest before cutting, and layers that hold together on the fork.
Your own work in that: 55 min.
- Vegetables and meat 25 min
- Ragù simmering 90 min
- Béchamel 15 min
- Assembling 15 min
- Baking 55 min
- Resting 15 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneSoften the pancetta and soffritto
Cut the onion, carrot and celery into very fine dice, 3–4 mm. Heat the olive oil in a wide, heavy pot and fry the pancetta over medium heat 5 minutes, until the fat renders. Add the vegetables and cook another 8 minutes, until soft and translucent but not browned. Add the garlic for the last minute.
Ingredients: 700 g minced beef and pork · 100 g pancetta or unsmoked streaky bacon · 1 pcs onion · 1 pcs carrot · 1 pcs celery · 3 cloves garlic · 3 tbsp olive oil · 2 tbsp tomato paste · 700 ml tomato passata · 200 ml milk · 200 ml stock · 2 pcs bay leaves · 2 tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
TipFine dice dissolves into the ragù and gives it sweetness; 1 cm chunks stay chunks of carrot in the sauce. The fat rendered from the pancetta is both your cooking fat and the first layer of flavour.
3 mm dice, pancetta rendered, vegetables translucentBrown the meat and the tomato paste
Raise the heat to high, add the meat and break it up with a spoon. Fry 10 minutes, stirring rarely, until the released juices evaporate and the meat starts to sizzle and brown in patches. Add the tomato paste and fry 2 minutes, until it darkens to brick red.
TipMeat stewed in its own juices stays grey and bland. The Maillard reaction only starts once the water has gone and the pan passes about 140 °C, which is why you wait for the sizzle.
Simmer the ragù for ninety minutes
Pour in the passata, milk and stock, add the bay leaves, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, drop to the lowest heat and simmer with the lid ajar 90 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes. The finished ragù is thick, dark and glossy with fat on top; a spoon drawn across the base leaves a track that closes slowly.
TipMilk in a ragù is a Bolognese tradition: it softens the acidity of the tomatoes and gives the sauce a rounder, gentler flavour. Don't worry if it looks slightly curdled at first: after an hour and a half it disappears into the sauce.
Ninety minutes at the lowest heatCook a looser béchamel
Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook the roux 2 minutes, whisking, until it smells nutty but has not coloured. Add the milk a ladle at a time, whisking hard after each. Cook 8 minutes over medium heat, until the sauce thickens enough to fall from the whisk in a ribbon rather than dropping in blobs. Season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg.
Ingredients: 80 g butter · 80 g plain flour · 1000 ml milk · ½ tsp nutmeg · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp white pepper
TipBéchamel for lasagne must be looser than for a gratin: dry sheets will absorb roughly their own weight in liquid in the oven. A thick béchamel means hard, undercooked pasta corners.
Falls from the whisk in a ribbonBuild the layers
Heat the oven to 180 °C and butter the dish. Spread a ladle of béchamel over the base. Then repeat three times: pasta sheets laid edge to edge, a third of the ragù, béchamel, a handful of parmesan. Don't overlap the sheets: a double layer will not soften; fill gaps at the edges with broken pieces.
Ingredients: 450 g lasagne sheets · 150 g parmesan · 250 g mozzarella · 20 g butter
Sheets edge to edge, ragù, béchamel, parmesanFinish the top
Lay the fourth and final layer of sheets and cover it with the rest of the béchamel, sealing the pasta completely, then the rest of the parmesan and the torn mozzarella. An exposed corner of a sheet will bake to a shard, so cover everything with sauce. Wipe the rim of the dish.
Béchamel sealing, parmesan, mozzarellaBake covered, then uncovered
Cover the dish with foil without touching the cheese and bake 40 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes, until the top is deep golden and bubbling. Test with a knife through the middle: it should pass through every layer without resistance.
TipThe foil traps steam for the first 40 minutes, and that steam is what cooks the dry sheets; without it the top burns before the pasta softens. The last 15 minutes uncovered are colour and crust.
Forty minutes covered, fifteen uncoveredRest a quarter of an hour
Take it out and leave 15 minutes. This is not fussiness: piping-hot lasagne slumps on the plate because the sauces and cheese have not set. After a quarter of an hour it cuts into squares with clean edges. Serve with a green salad and olive oil.
After fifteen minutes the layers hold their square
Before you start
A day ahead
Ragù made the day before is noticeably better, and the assembled lasagne keeps up to 24 hours in the fridge before baking. Bake it from cold 10 minutes longer under the foil.
With fresh pasta
Fresh sheets need less liquid: cut the béchamel to 750 ml and bake 30 minutes covered. The layers are more delicate but harder to cut cleanly.
Vegetarian
Instead of meat, 600 g mushrooms and 200 g red lentils, simmered the same way for 45 minutes. Skip the pancetta and add a spoon of dried mushrooms for depth.
