Chris Makes BA's Best Lasagna | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

I'm rolling up my sleeves for this one, so this is das

best

e Sonia, this is our deep dive into the world of a more traditional

lasagna

that has ragù bolognese as its type of meat sauce, plus béchamel and noodles. Now, today you know we're not making our own noodles, honestly, I found that you know store bought noodles work perfectly using Czech

lasagna

sheets, which are kind of a nice kind of, you know, a little bit broader. you know, kind of a rectangle that works really well and we're going to jump right into it because we've got a, we've got it, we've got a jam here, there's a lot to get over first and the base of this lasagna and for me. most lasagna is the sauce, it's a Bolognese ragout, so this is a mix of beef and pork.

Andi and I have had many discussions about bolognese, there are endless variations, but they all involve some combination of meats. cooked very often with tomato, but not necessarily always with some kind of tomato and broth product and some kind of dairy product, whether it's milk or cream, so I'm going to address that directly. I'll talk to you about it as we go along. It's a little unorthodox. I'm going to get it out of the way. I will season it liberally with salt. I'm going to combine these meats. I'm not really worried about making it super, that's not even what it's about.

I'm going to brown the meat in a ball shape because in a ball shape I can brown all of this meat in two batches very, very, very easily and actually develop a great color on the outside of the meat without overcooking it, I think most of it is with "This is a little off, but I feel like I'm thinking like a cop, you know, I think we'd be in something cool, like a Dodge Challenger, you know, like a black, something low-key, you know, I didn't hear the sizzle." I'm not going to sit here and start making bad decisions right there, if that means not browning, what's the point?

That's what John Oliver said the other night. Why we can sear these meats so much more efficiently in ball form is obviously a question. Do you know that the contact area of ​​the holder means that it is actually in contact with the surface and there are good spaces between the balls so that all the steam can escape from the pan that we are not trying to cook the meat in? It's going to be fully cooked in the braising process, we just want the benefit of all the flavor development that happens when it takes color here, okay, I'm going to wash my hands, don't go anywhere, that's like you know what. minimum.

I'm looking for, okay, that's ideal, you know, don't try to force it, you don't want to show off all the beautiful fun that you're creating at the bottom of this and all those brown parts which is where the flavor is okay, I don't want it to be too spicy. when you stick the pencil in, but it's probably good, it's going to get it, you know, slightly brown, a little crunchy, it brings out the fat, the power of a cured pork product to impart massive amounts of flavor to something that's right where you want it. we need, it will continue to cook a little along with our onion and carrot.

You know, I don't believe much in carrots. You know, in any type of pasta sauce in general, but in bolognese. It just belongs, it's like celery, it just gives a very complete base of aromatic vegetables. Turn up the heat a little at this point. I'm and I also seasoned this. A little more salt will help draw moisture out of these vegetables. They cook a little faster and we're creating successful waves of flavor. I'm not going to lie, you know, this is a recipe with many steps, the sauce has its own touch, it's incredibly manageable, you know. the sauce is frozen for funds in the freezer there is an alchemy to the way pasta behaves when cooked with a layer of béchamel there is a creaminess you get from béchamel in a lasagna that can't be replicated by simply adding cheese or anything else, okay? we can see that the coloring of the vegetables is intensifying, they are softening, my dad would let you know Marcello's version of this sauce in I think it is the essence of Italian cuisine and you would smell that smell.

My room in high school was like all up on the third floor of our house in the attic and you know, like our number two, the smell would have carried over to my room, you know where I was, like locked in there, hanging out with Andy painting our nails. black listening to the cure, you know, drawing pentagrams, okay and it was like magic, so these are the key brands of double concentrated tomato paste in the tube, weave the tomato paste tube in there. Oh God, bless, okay, so I'm sorry. I got off topic Booty Graham Double Concentrate is fine, it's in the tube.

I'm not really looking for these vegetables to brown. I just want them to be very, very soft. You don't want to put all this liquid in and then put in the tomato paste and after writing the tomato paste it is imperative that it is placed on top of the aromatics so that it can cook by the time the wine goes in, this will never be on top from the simmering temperature, just the oil that is there now is frying paste at a higher temperature than you could reach in the presence of water may seem complicated, it

makes

sense, so the wine alone will add acidity to the sauce and we want the wine to cook on its own so that the alcohol can be removed from the concentrated flavor, so what I like to do is hold them back and add a little bit of this liquid so I can start to concentrate while I work in breaking down these tomatoes, yeah, make sure you have a very clean flavor. cutter, we can, you know, there are no jagged edges, so this is a low cook, it will take about eight to ten minutes, okay, I'll push it at a good pace, look how the tomato is almost at the point where it's frying. as much as it simmers, that

makes

sense, it's at the point where it's almost like the fat that's here is almost separating from the liquid and then you just hit it with a little bit of salt here, so it has a flavor pretty bright, but obviously it's going to go in the oven with all that meat and it's going to be balanced by the low sodium chicken broth and a cup of whole milk meatballs in all that liquid, so I just want it to come back to a simmer before I put it in. in the oven if I was making this just purple and AIDS, I probably wouldn't have put as much tomato in there, but there's something about lasagna that I feel like you want a little more tomato sauce. ajar and in a 225 degree oven, the next step béchamel sounds complicated, it's not so Roux more milk in your mouth okay so I have 6 tablespoons of butter here, once the butter is completely melted you can put your 7 tablespoons all-purpose butter.

The flour inside has an amazing flavor development that happens when you toast the amazing flour, one more minute in the meantime, I have water coming up for our lasagna sheets, the milk is coming in, just whisk very vigorously as the milk comes in, try to Don't make a huge mess. I'm fine, so I'm going to increase it because there's no danger of boiling the milk here, so the starch needs to boil to fully activate and fully thicken the sauce so we can get there sooner. better, then boiling salted water you can use a little more salt, boom, okay, I'm going to eat the pasta sheets one by one, okay, the reason is that I want to stir and shake as they come in so that they don't stay together, that's the tricky thing with lasagna noodles, I'm really, really, really, really, really, I'm nervous.

I'm going to cook them in two batches which we could have used maybe like a little bit bigger pot or something, but I think it's like ordering. for problems no Brad yes the guy is referring to manicotti without béchamel okay look how this is very flexible but ultimately when I bend it it's like a house it tends to want to almost break that's great , that's exactly what we want, that was three minutes. oh man, yeah, two of them are stuck together but honestly, if a couple stick together, that's no big deal, just move on with the rest, so I'm going to place these sheets of pasta between pieces of parchment.

You could use wax paper, basically, no. I don't want to keep them in the water too long because they will continue to absorb it. You don't want to stack them on top of each other because they'll start to stick together, so I'm going to turn this down, the water's back. I'm going to let it sit for about 10 minutes, whisking from time to time. The second round of pasta is going well, so the bechamel has been cooking for ten minutes and I would also say that it is a little thick, it is concentrated. I need to get the parmesan.

There nutmeg with béchamel is kind of a traditional cayenne, it just gives a little bit of lift, not so much that it's spicy, it just has a tendency to wake up the food, mmm, so the sauce has been rolling around very slow lazy bubbles , this is not an active oil situation. how that meat goes from ball to nothing, you know, this is just breaking it, crushing it slightly, it will integrate, you know, the solid and liquid elements of this sauce and join them only with a small layer of oil so that there is no stick here, the order is immediate and the order is to activate Caterpillar Drive.

I don't feel it. I immediately went looking for Red October. This is a little bit like I'd rather have, like you know, five layers of Everything so, you know, each one is a little bit thinner than three massive layers. You know, I'll do the right thing and cut out just a little strip from the next one. I found the DeCicco to be good that way. Know? you can cut strips easily, it's just a little bit wider, it's a little bit more forgiving, forgiving in the assembly process, next time maybe I'll go this route, you know, I like to vary it that way, you know, each piece has something like that. an interlocking and overlapping type architecture, you know, kind of pasta pieces, so this is where the magic happens, then we repeat with ragù to change the direction of the pasta.

Cool, cool. We're going to throw this in the oven at 425, just crispy. Fill it up and take this baby home, it will last ten to fifteen. Okay, okay, that's it, you don't want to serve this jump because, frankly, you want to give it a second to have all the kind of liquid. and everything rebalances there so you can get a nice clean slice, okay. I already took out a slice. I'm going to make a couple more so they can start to cool down. Oh, I mean, no. I don't know who isn't a corner piece, kind of an individual boom and it holds together, you know, I remember I love it right away and I've always burned it like Oh, I always love it and I sing everything, honestly, I just want to. to point out that there's something that béchamel allows pasta to do where it's exposed the way they button up and get crispy and become cookie-like, maybe just a pinch of salt, you're okay, I didn't say that, it's well, maybe just a song we were both thinking okay okay we're partners bad boys for Lima two bad boys for life we ​​ride together we die together