Mushroom Lasagna
Total Time
2 hours
Rating
0 out of 5 stars
(0)
Ingredients
8 servings
- Salt
- Olive oil
- 3/4 pound (12 ounces or 340 grams) dried lasagna noodles
- 1 large clove garlic, minced
- 4 cups (950 ml) whole milk
- 3/4 cup (12 tablespoons, 6 ounces or 170 grams) unsalted butter, divided
- 1/2 cup (65 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (I use less, because this seems like a lot)
- 1 1/2 pounds (680 grams) cremini or portobello mushrooms, sliced
- 1 cup (85 grams or 3 ounces) freshly grated parmesan
How would you rate this recipe?
Preparation
Step 1
Heat your oven to 375°F.
Step 2
Prepare noodles: Bring a large, wide pot of water to boil with salt and a splash of oil. Add the lasagna noodles and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Step 3
Make béchamel: Bring the milk and garlic to simmer in a saucepan, or heat it in your microwave, and set it aside. Melt 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons or 115 grams) butter in a large saucepan. Add the flour and cook for one minute over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon. Pour in the hot milk, a little at a time at first and stirring until combined. Once you’ve added half of it, you can add the second half all at once, along with 2 teaspoons kosher salt, the pepper, and nutmeg. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring or whisking frequently, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until thick. Set aside.
Step 4
Prepare mushrooms: Discard portobello mushroom stems and/or trim the ends of the cremini stems. Slice mushrooms 1/4-inch thick. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat in the bottom of the large, wide pot you used to cook the noodles earlier, or in a large sauté pan. Cook half the mushrooms with a couple pinches of salt for about 5 minutes, or until they are tender and release some of their juices, tossing to make sure they cook evenly. Repeat with additional oil and butter, and remaining mushrooms.
Step 5
Assemble lasagna: Spread some of the sauce in the bottom of an 8 x 12 or 9 x 13 baking dish. Arrange a layer of noodles on top, then more sauce (about 1/4 of what remains), 1/3 of the mushrooms, and 1/4 cup grated parmesan. Repeat two more times, then top with a final layer of noodles, your remaining sauce, and last 1/4 cup of parmesan.
Step 6
Bake: For 45 minutes, or until top is browned and the sauce is bubbly. Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. To freeze for future use, allow it to cool completely and wrap two to three times in plastic wrap before freezing.
Step 7
Save recipe for the next time?
Chef's notes
[2018 update] I have been making this recipe for years and it never fails to receive rave reviews, even from people who think that they could only love red-sauced lasagna. I tweak it in a bunch of ways. I swap out portobellos with cremini (small brown) mushrooms as portobellos are more expensive, harder to find, break easily and are, in fact, just large brown mushrooms. I add a clove of minced garlic to the sauce, because I love it in a bechamel.
My only gripe with this recipe is the number of pots it uses; I counted 4 in the original (not including the colander, cutting board, and knife, ugh) and managed to trim it to 3 in my version. However, I always forget all about the inconvenience of dishes once I taste the final dish — completely and totally worth it.
A few optional tweaks:
I sometimes add 1/2 cup chopped shallots to the pan before the mushrooms, cooking them until they soften a little, then adding the mushrooms. I often skip warming the milk and just add it slowly and carefully to the butter-flour mixture, and it isn’t a problem. A splash of wine or marsala would be great in the mushrooms, then cooked off at the end. Finally, I am always tempted to increase everything in this recipe by 1/3, i.e., using a full pound of noodles and a full two pounds of mushrooms, and make a more towering lasagna, but you’ll want to make sure you have a deep pan (mine is 3″ deep and I’m not fully confident). There’s also the fact that it might be almost over-the-top rich; the thickness, as written, is quite nice.
