Hi everyone welcome to my kitchen, I hope you're ready because we're freezer banking today
we're gonna be freezer banking homemade meat and cheese lasagna and
You know as well as I do that
This is quite a job, but I'm gonna show you how you can do it easy
How you can take all of the?
Headache out of it
And how you can package these up for later use where you make all of them at one time it's gonna
take you a couple of hours and
You'll have
Four to five lasagnas ready to go in your freezer for those days when you just don't know what to make
Let's go see how this all comes together
It is lasagna time I don't hardly ever make lasagna
But today we're gonna be doing some lasagna, and we're going to be making it with the intention of freezer banking now
I'm making this on a Saturday afternoon, and we're not having it for dinner tonight, but tomorrow is Church day
And we have a lot going on and we have Church and then we have stuff in the afternoon
And then we're gonna have dinner early
And then we're gonna have lasagna at that time because we have to go back to church tomorrow evening for something special
so we're gonna make lasagna today and
I got everything going here, so you've never seen me make lasagna. I thought I would share how I make it
It's super easy. This is very basic
This is not a lasagna Bolognese this does not have bechamel sauce in it. This is straight-up
Old-fashioned my mom's lasagna. Okay super easy we're gonna start off with I have this is
Half a gallon of
ricks
Irish spaghetti sauce with it's made with beef and pork lots of mushrooms. I have more on the stove
I actually had four quarts total, so this is - yeah. This is two quarts. I have two more quarts on the stove
And we will give you a link to the video where he makes that as well as a video to I mean a link to
the recipe
And I like to use these oven ready lasagna. Noodles. It doesn't matter. What brand you use they're all the same
I have three boxes because I don't know how many I'm gonna need I have five pounds of ricotta cheese
I have this two pound container of regular and this three pound container of the ricotta fresca
You can use whatever kind you want
This is what they had at Sam's Club
so this is what I picked up and
this has literally three ingredients got milk and it's made with vinegar like I would make my ricotta cheese and
something else
Salt that's it milk vinegar in salt was what went into this this one is the same except it
Has gums in it it has guar gum and xanthan gum I think in the future. I'm going to seek this out
I like this brand. I also like the Palio brand, but this brand I like
Better because it's very dense cheese, and it's very
Flavorful of course ricotta cheese isn't super flavorful. It really it depends on what you put in it
I'm going to tighten up the cheese filling with some eggs, so I'm using
Essentially one egg for every pound plus one for good measure because I like my ricotta layer to actually keep its shape
I do not like it to lose out when we slice it
I have some fresh grated parmigiano-reggiano and over here. I have four pounds of freshly grated whole milk mozzarella
Not part skim. I like the whole milk better, but that's up to you
You can use whatever you like, but this is whole milk mozzarella, and I think I said
I don't know how much I'm gonna need so I graded four pounds
I still have a pound in the fridge and all of our seasonings that we're gonna put in
we've got some garlic powder onion powder Italian seasoning parsley basil and black pepper and
That is all that goes into my lasagna
We're gonna build the the cheese filling then we're gonna start building our our lasagnas, so I'll be right back all right
We're gonna build our cheese filling now. This is for the obviously the cheese layer in our lasagna now. I have both
containers of the ricotta cheese in here along with
about two and a half to three cups of shredded mozzarella as
Well as a cup of grated Parmesan, and now I'm just gonna do like my mom did and I'm just gonna season this okay now
Remember, this is a lot of cheese. It's not all going into the same pan
I'm gonna show you the pans that I'm gonna use because they're perfect for my family
And I'm gonna use at least a tablespoon of each one of these
Seasonings so there went the pepper and the basil here's some Italian seasoning and
As these sit in the cheese mixture and
In the lasagna with all the sauce and everything these are gonna hydrate, and they're going to flavor everything really well
But you should season yours to taste into your liking you shouldn't
Be forced to do you know what I do, and here's some powdered garlic
Actually, I only ever use granulated garlic powder and onion powder so when you hear me saying that know that it's granulated and
Parsley, I just remember my mom always putting a ton of parsley
And then you see that in the cheese layer in the flecks and also
remember
Rick's sauce is very highly seasoned as well so and
Here go our six eggs
And then you're gonna get in here and you're gonna mix everything up
Who am I kidding my hands are clean
This how Amana would have done it as well
If you scoop up from the bottom. It is helpful
It's also gonna help you get a really even distribution
And just when you thought it was gonna be too loose or liquidy there you go all those cheeses and everything in there
They really do help tighten up this layer and with the eggs it's gonna help them
it's gonna help that cheese layer to be kind of solid and
That's really what I like
All right, I'll go wash my hands, and then we'll start building up these lasagnas, okay
We're ready to build up our lasagnas and before I start
I want to show you the foil pans that I got now you guys know
I love a foil pan, but I always put parchment on top and then cover it with foil before I freeze it today
I'm planning on freezer banking all but one of these lasagnas and
I'll show you how I prep them for the freezer after I get them all built
One of them is gonna be put in the refrigerator
And it's gonna be baked off for tomorrow night's dinner now these pans are called 1/3
Size steam table pans and I got these at Sam's Club
And if I can find a link to a similar pan online, I will leave it for you now
this is not as large as a 9 by 13 or 1/2 steam table pan which isn't quite 9 by 13 and
But a whole steam table pan is like twice the size of a 9 by 13
These are 12
by 6 in it with 12 and 1/2 by 6 and a half
This will fit usually they've little they have a little picture here this will fit three to a chafer if you know what those little
Wire chafers are this will fit 3 across
but I feel like if I
This size is perfect for my family to have one meal of lasagna with probably a leftover lunch
It's very deep it's 2 and 3/4 inches deep and that's what we like so to build lasagna
It's pretty easy and across the board. This is what you want to do now
We want to put a little bit of sauce in the bottom
Like this and then I'm using oven ready
Lasagna noodles that means you don't need to boil them first and that's important
Then I'm gonna put a layer of our cheese mixture
Now
Don't be stingy
Okay
Spread this all the way to the edges
Then we're going to put more sauce on
Top just like that
And remember there's cheese, there's like grated cheese inside that cheese layer now. This is meat and cheese lasagna
Because I have meat in a sauce
But I know that my mom sometimes would put a whole layer of
meat that was mixed with a little bit of sauce in here, so it would be like a
Cheese layer a noodle layer a meat layer with sauce a cheese layer a noodle layer
And you know so on and so forth so it's up to you
Some people like to put sliced meat balls in their lasagna, which is delicious
Some people like to put slices of it cooked Italian sausage in their lasagna
That's entirely
Whatever is is your deal? That's what you should put in your lasagna?
Some people like to put spinach what have you more sauce?
This smells really good
And remember these noodles are going to expand as they absorb moisture while they cook, so
Do not be worried that it's not going all the way to the edge
Now I have two layers of cheese in here
I have three layers of noodles in here and three layers of sauce right now what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna add an extra layer of sauce
You want to make sure there's enough moisture so that your noodles cook all the way correctly
Okay, now. We're gonna get our mozzarella on
And then I'm gonna give it a sprinkle of parmesan
And that's it that's how easy it is to build a lasagna so what I'm gonna
Do now is I'm gonna go and I'm gonna build as many as I can with the ingredients that I have available to me today
And I'll bring you back
And I'll show you what they all look like and I'll show you how I'm gonna prep the ones that are going in the freezer
Okay, I got all of my lasagnas done, and I got five of them, which makes me very happy now
I will say I did have to add
One jar of sauce to the sauce I had left so this one down here has very little meat in it
But it's mostly cheese and sauce so it'll still be delicious
But I am gonna mark it so I know that this one is the one we should use last
So what I'm gonna
Do now is I'm gonna grab my things
And I'm gonna show you how I wrap these up and get them ready to put in the freezer
All right now. I'm gonna prep these
To be put in the freezer this one it could either way fridge or freezer
I'm gonna prep them the same way now. I have a piece of parchment paper now
I buy my parchment in
sheets that will fit inside of my baking sheets so that's why they're like they're very large I cut them in half and
Then we're just going to put some foil on top
Now on my larger foil pans I actually have lids
that fit
These I did not see any lids, but I'm sure I could probably buy them from a restaurant supply
But today. We'll go with the foil since that's what we have
You want to make sure that everything is tucked in with foil?
The parchment is tucked in there. I'm gonna put another layer of foil
If you have heavy-duty foil you can just use one layer and
Since I put the parchment on there
There's no reason to go to the expense of using non-stick foil I do have nonstick foil
But I try and limit when when I use that because it's very expensive
Make sure that this has a nice tight seal on it
now I
Have some 2 gallon ziplock bags. These are like
Storage bags all the others are going to be put in one of these plastic bags
And I have instructions
that I print it out on the computer and
This shows how to make it
from thawed or from frozen
If you're gonna put these in the freezer then mostly you'll be able to just bake these from from frozen
But I'm gonna put that right there
and
I'm going to
Just kind of fold this under so that when I put this in the
In the freezer then it will behave itself you can also put a little piece of like if you have
Freezer tape like from wrapping meat and stuff you can put a little tape under there
but that's gonna stack just fine, so that's what I'm gonna do and
We're gonna bake one off
Tomorrow afternoon and when we get ready to serve it I'll bring you back
And I'll show you what it looks like and I'll fix your plate, and we'll give it a taste
Okay, it is the next day. It is Sunday afternoon, and we are getting ready to eat our lasagna dinner
I have this in the refrigerator overnight
I just popped it in a 350 degree oven for about an hour, and it's ready to go
I also want you to let it sit for at least 15 minutes
After you take it out of the oven so that it has time to rest
Reabsorb any liquids that have come out during baking and then it will be a lot easier for you to slice
Right and I know that Rick is ready to give this a try you have to I know you're not gonna regret this one though
Really yummy I already tasted it when I was serving it up so you guys this is really awesome
This is the best way. I know of how to keep lasagna in your freezer
Just make sure you're you know you make a big batch of sauce and then you have enough left over plan ahead of time
Use the oven ready lasagna noodles, and then just build those lasagnas up one at a time
Boom-boom-boom wrap them up put them in your freezer, and you'll be good to go
I hope you enjoyed this video, and I hope that you learned something if you enjoyed it
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I hope you give freezer banking your own version of lasagna a try, and I hope you love it and until next time
I'll see you
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