Mary Berry Express Lasagne v 2.0
Looking for an easy lasagne recipe? Try our revised version of Mary Berry's Express Lasagne. It's full of bold flavours, including sausage meat, chestnut mushrooms, spinach, tomato sauce and cheddar cheese. After testing the original recipe we came up with a few tips to help you nail this meal to perfection.
Servings 5 servings
Calories 661kcal
Equipment
- ovenproof dish measuring about 30x20cm
- large non-stick frying pan
- large bowl
Ingredients
- 9 dried lasagne sheets Barilla lasagne, aprox 160 g
- 100 g Cheddar cheese grated
For the pork and spinach sauce
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 450 g pork sausage meat or 7 sausages (aprox 466 g), casing discarded
- 1 red chilli deseeded and finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves crushed
- 250 g chestnut mushrooms sliced
- 200 ml full-fat crème fraîche
- 100 g baby spinach roughly chopped
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the tomato sauce
- 500 g passata
- 2 tablespoon sun-dried tomato paste optional
- 1 tablespoon light muscovado sugar
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
Instructions
Make Pork and Spinach Filling
- Fry sausage meat in a large non-stick pan until turning golden-brown. While frying, break bigger clumps into smaller pieces.
- Add mushrooms, chilli, garlic and fry for 5 minutes.
- Stir in the spinach and creme fraiche, and season with salt and pepper. Let it cook for 2 - 3 minutes. Set aside.
Prepare Tomato Sauce
- Mix all ingredients for the tomato sauce (passata, tomato paste, sugar and herbs) in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.
Assemble Lasagne
- Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6.
- Assemble the dish by making 3 lasagne layers with sausage filling and tomato sauce in between; start with covering the bottom of the dish with one-quarter of tomato sauce.
- Lay 3 sheets of lasagne over the sauce, cover them with the second quarter of tomato sauce. Spread the sauce gently over the dried sheets with a spoon. Scatter one-third of sausage/spinach filling over the top.
- Repeat the process creating two more lasagne layers.
- Sprinkle the grated cheddar cheese over the top.
- Bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
Tips
- A potato masher (plastic doesn’t scratch the pan's surface) can help break bigger clumps of meat into smaller pieces.
- When substituting fresh spinach for frozen spinach, drain the excess water away once the spinach is thawed and chop the leaves.
- If the meat filling seems a bit dry, add more creme fraiche to it.
- Ideally, the 3 sheets in each layer should fit the dish surface without too much overlapping. If needed, snap the corners of the lasagne sheets to fit your dish.
- Barilla dry lasagne sheets or fresh lasagne are best in this recipe. Other (dried) lasagne might require pre-cooking and can stay hard in places.
Notes
Please visit the BBC Food Website for the original Mary Berry's Express Lasagne Recipe and her directions.
Nutrition
Calories: 661kcal | Carbohydrates: 42g | Protein: 27g | Fat: 43g | Saturated Fat: 16g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 5g | Monounsaturated Fat: 16g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 108mg | Sodium: 879mg | Potassium: 1172mg | Fiber: 4g | Sugar: 11g | Vitamin A: 3186IU | Vitamin C: 31mg | Calcium: 249mg | Iron: 4mg