Is this recipe doing too much… or is it genius?

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

Time: 2 Hours

The idea of this recipe is intriguing. Instead of using lasagna noodles, layer cheese filled ravioli along with the typical lasagna ingredients and it can’t be too different at the end of the day. Curiosity is the main reason why I decided to make this recipe. I just wanted to know if ravioli made lasagna any better.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

No ingredients were left out of this recipe. Well, I did use Grana Padano instead or parmesan.

1. I wasn’t able to find frozen ravioli that wasn’t already in a sauce at the stores I went to, so I just bought some refrigerated ravioli and put it in the freezer when I got home.

2. Forgive me for the part skim Mozzarella
   

Tools:

• Nothing Special

Cooking Review:

Sauce: 45 minutes

Once I minced my garlic and chopped my onions, I heated my pan and added the ground beef and onions. I cooked those for about 7 minutes before I drained off most of the fat and added the marinara sauce and garlic. It took about 4 minutes to get to a simmer, then I let it simmer for 5 minutes.

Ricotta Mixture: 5 minutes

This step was done while the sauce was coming up to a simmer and simmering. It’s really simple, just mixing all of the necessary ingredients until combined.

Assembly: 15 minutes

Just as with typical lasagna, everything is then layered in a baking dish. Meat sauce followed by pasta followed by meat sauce and cheese. That step is repeated once more, ending with cheese on top. I will say that because ravioli is clearly a different shape than lasagna, it’s not as easy to get even and smooth layers on top of them. This didn’t turn out to be too big of a big deal at the end of the day, though.

Baking: 1 hour

After everything had been layered into the baking dish, I covered it with aluminum foil and let it bake for 30 minute. The foil was then removed and I continued to let it bake for another 30 minutes. The recipe says to let it cook for 15 minutes without the foil, but I wasn’t getting the color I was looking for on the cheese. I was, however seeing some bubbling. Even though I still didn’t get much browning on the cheese, I took it out at that point. If you have this problem and really want some color on the top, you can either increase the temperature at the end or put it under a broiler for a few minutes. I let it cool for 5 minutes before serving without extra basil on top for garnish.

Analysis:

The first thing I noticed was that there were still a few hard spots on the ravioli where it either wasn’t cooked enough or had dried out in the oven from not being covered in sauce. After that, I noticed the pleasant flavors of the ricotta mixture, being creamy and milky with the basil flavor coming through here and there. It was pretty well seasoned, too (you should probably use a little more salt than you think it needs in the steps that ask for it). The sauce was also flavorful and had strong, but not overpowering, garlic flavor. I wish the dish had more sauce, which could have helped with the few hard spots of pasta and paired better with the amount of the ricotta mixture. Overall, this is a solid recipe. Does the ravioli need to be there? Not at all. In fact, this would probably be better if it were just a lasagna. The additional cheese from the ravioli doesn’t do anything that the ricotta doesn’t do better. I’ll give this one a 7/10. It was a unique idea that just didn’t do anything better than the ‘traditional’ version.