The old recipes are the BEST…and as you can see from this old recipe card that is falling apart and covered with spatters, it has been well used over the years. I actually didn’t even know how to spell lasagna back then because I was only 19 years old and had lived my whole life eating only Southern cooking and the closest thing to Italian food I had ever eaten was spaghetti. Had never heard of lasagna but when my friend made it, I fell in love with it and copied her recipe. And the funny part of the story is that she got the recipe from her Italian mother-in-law who never measured anything so she had to make her measure just so she could write down the recipe. I sure am glad she did!
Now some of you will say it isn’t Italian if I use cottage cheese instead of Ricotta cheese…well, maybe not, but back in the day, you couldn’t find any Ricotta Cheese in our local grocery stores in the South, so we used cottage cheese. And now, that is what my family prefers. What can I say?? I guess I like Southern Italian food. ha ha
I call it my Christmas Lasagna because that is just about the only time I make it, and as my family has grown, I now double the recipe to feed 12+ adults on Christmas Day with a few servings leftover for take home containers. Y’all enjoy!
GG's Christmas Lasagna
Equipment
- stock pot
- 9 x 13 baking dish
- large skillet
Ingredients
- 1 box lasagna noodles (9 noodles)
- 1 lb chopped sirloin or lean ground beef
- 1 medium onion minced
- 2 cloves of garlic minced (1 tsp)
- 6 oz can of tomato paste
- 30 oz can of crushed tomatoes
- 1 tsp parsley flakes
- 1 egg
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 32 oz small curd cottage cheese (or ricotta cheese if preferred)
- 3 cups parmesan cheese
Instructions
- NOTE: You can make the meat sauce a day or two early and store in refrigerator. You can also make the cheese mixture ahead of time too. Then just cook the noodles and assemble the lasagna layers when you are ready to either cook it or freeze it.
Meat Sauce
- cook meat & onion in a large skillet in 3 tbsp of olive oil
- add garlic and cook until meat is light brown.
- In a sauce pan strain the liquid out of the tomatoes, squeezing as much as possible from the tomatoes. Discard the squeezed dry tomatoes and bring the tomato liquid to a boil then lower to simmer.
- Stir can of tomato paste into the browned meat in the skillet along with 1/4 cup of the hot tomato liquid so that all the meat is coated. Simmer for about 5 minutes and then pour all the remaining hot tomato liquid into the skillet with the meat mixture and simmer for 45 minutes. The meat sauce will be thick
Cottage Cheese mixture
- Mix cottage cheese with 1 cup of the parmesan cheese, 1 egg and 1 tsp of parsley. Stir well and place in refrigerator.
Lasagna Assembly
- Cook lasagna noodles in boiling water with 1 tbsp. of olive oil for 8 minutes.
- In a 9 x 13 pan place a layer of meat sauce, then sprinkle with parmesan cheese, top with 3 lasagna noodles, cover noodles with cottage cheese mixture and then top with mozzarrella cheese. Repeat this 2 more times so that you wind up with 3 layers of noodles. Place some meat sauce sprinkled with parmesan cheese on top.
- Bake in 375 degree oven for 20 minutes.
You’re right! My family had to use doctored up cottage cheese too. Back in the day, ricotta cheese was not available in our grocery store. My Italian Grandmother would use the cottage cheese and always made the spaghetti sauce from scratch. Brings back a lot of memories. Thank you!
Mama always used Cottage Cheese, too. After trying Ricotta as a grown up, I prefer Cottage Cheese!
I totally agree. I think the Ricotta is too thick. love, GG