Lasagne Bolognese (includes Béchamel sauce)

Lasagne bolognese

This was a very tasty dish, and I will definitely cook it again. It is a little time consuming though, since there are two parts to cook (the meat then the béchamel sauce), then the building of the lasagne, then cooking it for 40 minutes, plus a little cooling time (I'm always too impatient for this!). Hands on time is short, just a lot of waiting in between! But that gives you time to do other jobs...or relax with the remainder of the wine!

I did make a few little alterations to this dish, not anything drastic - but I added a couple of cloves of garlic with the vegetables, and then when I added the crushed tomatoes I added a tablespoon of vegetable stock paste.

I did think the sauce could have been a bit more tomato-ey in flavour. Perhaps I would add a little bit of tomato paste next time. I also didn't have the right sized lasagne dish. The one I used was a bit too small, so I ended up adding thicker layers of meat with less pasta than the dish required. This made it difficult to cut and put on the plate, and made a bit of a mess! It will probably be okay tomorrow once it has been set in the fridge overnight though.

Bolognese sauce

I did find the meat was a little too broken down for my liking. Next time I might make my own mince out of slightly frozen diced beef, so that the end result is a little bit chunkier.

The Béchamel sauce turned out perfectly. The consistency of it was just right, it coated the back of the spoon and wasn't too runny. The only think I would change is maybe adding a little bit of vegetable stock paste to that as well.

Béchamel sauce

This dish could be made a little faster if fresh lasagne sheets were used. I usually do buy the fresh ones, but decided to try the dried sheets this time to follow the recipe timing. I will try this again, with a better sized lasagne dish next time, and a few of the suggestions I have discussed, and will update!

Happy thermomixing!