I love this recipe. I have made it many times. Skip the salt on zucchini step and don't add any water to the sauce. The zucchini will add the moisture you need. I also add a clove or two of garlic minced, with the onion to the sauce. Great with Italian sausage instead of ground beef.
I've never made this specific recipe, but I do regularly make zuchinni no noodle lasagna, and it is great. My tip for moisture reduction - salt your zuchinni slices, then put in the oven at 350F for about 10 minutes (start to turn brown). Pull them out, pat with paper towels, leave on paper towels until ready to put in lasagna. This removes almost all of the water from them. Personally, I like to let the juices from my meat add moisture to my lasagna rather than the veggies juice, so that's why I really drain them well. very good, very healthy!
This recipe was very tasty. You can substitute your own spaghetti sauce, make sure it's extra thick though because once cooked, the veggies give a lot of juice. The best solution is to serve the dish with a good bread to sop up the juice! Great dish for large group, or for reheating during the week in a busy household. It gets better every meal because the flavors continue to meld. Just serve it with a different side each night like green beans, salad. Excellent dish!
This deserves 5 stars. I'm sure it would be just as wonderful made according to directions. However, I do have to admit I did change mine a bit... Took the advice of another reviewer & baked the zucchini at 350 for 12 minutes with just 1 tsp of salt sprinkled on it. Don't forget the cooking spray or they stick!
Instead of making my own sauce, I just used spaghetti sauce. I also used chicken Italian sausage instead of ground beef.
Added the spinach, pepper & herbs (basil & oregano) to the ricotta cheese mixture instead of separately. Added a layer of chopped broccoli & cauliflower and some shredded carrot to the whole mix. (I wanted lots of veggies!)
Only used one cup total of Mozzarella cheese, half in the middle with all the veggies & cheese and the other half on top. Also only used about 1/2 of a cup of Parmesan for the top. Was not overly watery for me. A big helping point for that I think is drying out the zucchini a bit in the oven and making sure you do allow it to rest for that 15 minutes after baking. The veggies will soak back up some of those juices. Delicious! My oldest son & husband ate 3 pieces each!
I made my own sauce. (Their recipe is questionable: who doesn't cook the onions until soft in olive oil before adding the meat, and why no garlic?? What's with the green pepper? This isn't chili. Why sauce and paste? How about good Redpack crushed tomatoes?) I did use salted zucchini, but I didn't add the spinach or mushrooms, because I didn't have them on hand. BUT..key points: the spinach is sure to be watery as they prepare it. Try using a bag of frozen spinach, and cook it in a bowl in the microwave WITHOUT any added water. The sliced mushrooms are going to be slithery and wet if not cooked first. Use a skillet with 1T olive oil and 2T butter over fairly high heat: they will exude their moisture and then brown nicely. Next time, I'm going to sear each side of the zucchini slices in olive oil after salting and before assembling.
I too was a bit skeptical bout this recipe but my mom said its good try it, my kids loved it! Also for all of you that were talking bout the extra water, my mom told me to add some rice to the bottom of the pan, so i put in like 2-3 handfulls in the bottom and it soaked up all that extra water! workd great! try it! this recipe is a keeper!! I also skipped the salt on the zucchini, and used reg. ragu sauce to save time.
This dish is delicious! I was surprised it didn't call for a little garlic (which I added 2 tbls), otherwise I think it would have been a little tasteless! The leftovers are even better the next day...just like the traditional lasagna!
FANTASTIC! It will not be watery at all as some have mentioned, as long as you follow the tips below.
Changes I made:
1. Omitted Green Pepper
2. Used dried basil (2 tsp.) instead of fresh
3. Used dried Oregano (1 tsp.) instead of fresh
4. Skipped the step of salting and letting zucchini sit in colander, instead I sliced zucchini, salted and roasted in oven for at 350 for 10 minutes.
5. Sautéed mushrooms in a 4 tablespoons of butter and then drained before adding them to the dish.
6. Did not add any water to sauce.
This recipe was excellent, and we will definitely make it more often. I used the slicing side of a cheese grater to get really thin slices of the zucchini, and then after salting and draining them I blotted them with a paper towel. As others suggested, I also left out the water from the sauce, and had no problems with too much moisture in the lasagna. I also followed the suggestion to put garlic into the sauce, along with a bit of salt and triple the basil (we had a lot of fresh basil to use). I thought the frozen spinach was strong, so I might try fresh spinach next time. We loved the result!
