Easy Lasagne | Student Cooking and Meal Prep

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Okay, so I feel like there are a million and one lasagne recipes out there, but this is my twist on it! This meat lasagne is great for student meal prep, as it keeps well in the fridge and freezer!

I love a good lasagne – especially the smell of it in the oven! My easy lasagne is a great, hearty evening meal and is lovely served alongside a bowl of fresh salad! Yum.

If you are looking for a vegetarian lasagne recipe, then check out my recipe for this Mediterranean Roasted Vegetable Lasagne and watch the video below to see how to make it!

How do you make this Easy Lasagne?

The basics of a lasagne are obviously layers of a tomato meat sauce, pasta, white sauce, and cheese! Lasagne is fairly time-consuming to make, but there is a lot of waiting, rather than hands-on time. And also, like I said, you can make this once but have 4 or 5 dinners so it´s absolutely worth the time and effort!

Meat Sauce

For the tomato meat sauce, I use lean beef mince, but you could also use lamb mince (if you´re feeling fancy) or a mix of beef and pork. To my sauce, I like to add plenty of veggies to bulk it up a bit. Onions are a must and I also use a variety of coloured peppers. I use 1.5-2 peppers in total. You can use any peppers you like, but I tend to use a few different colours – just for fun. Any leftover half-peppers I use to make other dishes, such as this Vegetable Rice Stir-fry.

For the sauce, I use chopped tomatoes, beef stock and also some red wine (I used Merlot, a small bottle is the perfect amount) to add just that little bit more flavour! Again, the wine is optional and you can just leave it out.

I added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and bay leaves to give the meat sauce a lovely flavour whilst it is simmering away. However, they are not absolutely essential, and you could also use some dried rosemary as a substitute.

White (Béchamel) Sauce

To make the white sauce, or Béchamel sauce to give it its Sunday name, all you need is a little butter, flour and milk! Knowing how to make a basic Béchamel sauce is something everyone should no how to do! Check out this post here to find out some more tips and tricks for making a good white sauce.

For this lasagne recipe I boiled up my milk with half an onion and some bay leaves and left it to infuse before using it to make the sauce. This gives the Béchamel sauce a really nice, more complex flavour. You can of course skip this step though if you want/are pushed for time.

Cheese

For my easy lasagne, I just use mozzarella cheese for the layers and some cheddar cheese to top! I have seen other recipes that also use ricotta or parmesan cheese as well! Using mozzarella and cheddar is a lot cheaper though and might be something that a student has lying around in their fridge anyway! So, before that cheddar cheese goes mouldy, use it to make this easy lasagne!

Get Ahead + Make this Easy Lasagne Faster to Make

This lasagne is really quick and easy to make if you have already made the meat sauce in advance. It´s basically a Bolognese sauce, so you might even still have some of that in the freezer that you can use for this recipe!

Then all you need to do is make a quick Béchamel (you can easily skip infusing the milk) and then you are ready to assemble! Layer it up, shove it in the oven, and 40 minutes later your delicious, easy lasagne will be ready for dinner!

What makes this Lasagne good for students?

Obviously, minced beef can be a little on the expensive side. However, this lasagne recipe makes about 4-5 portions, and the other ingredients needed for this recipe are cheap as chips! As I said, this recipe could last you for up to 4 or 5 dinners, so it´s a worth while use of your time and money to invest in making this easy lasagne!

The lasagne will keep for one or two days in the fridge (so great for the lunch or dinner the next day) but is also great for freezing. Simply freeze portions of this lasagne in Tupperware and defrost whenever you cannot be bothered cooking dinner!
Making, eating and freezing this homemade easy lasagne, is also a much healthier alternative than buying ready-meal lasagne. You can control what exactly goes into it, making it a lot lower in salt and sugar, plus you avoid all the preservatives. And it works out cheaper! Win-win!

More Student-friendly recipes (for Meal Prep)

Easy Lasagne | Student-friendly Cooking and Meal Prep Recipe

Recipe

Ingredients:

FOR THE MEAT SAUCE:

1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
½ each of a red, yellow and green pepper, cut into cubes
500g lean beef mince
187ml (1 small bottle) red wine (I used Merlot)
1 beef stock cube, dissolved in 250ml boiling water
2 tbsp tomato purée
400g (1 tin) chopped tomatoes
2 sprigs fresh rosemary (you can also use 1 tbsp of dried rosemary)
3 bay leaves
Salt and pepper, to season

FOR THE WHITE (BÉCHAMEL) SAUCE:

350-400ml milk
½ onion
2 bay leaves
25g butter
25g flour
Ground nutmeg, salt and pepper, to season

TO ASSEMBLE:

9 dried lasagne sheets
125g mozzarella, finely sliced
75g cheddar, grated

YOU WILL ALSO NEED:

1 large frying pan with a lid
1 small pot
measuring jug
box grater
wooden spoon
25x21cm (roughly) oven-proof dish (like this one)

Method:

Start by preparing the milk for the Béchamel sauce. Pour the milk into a medium-sized saucepan, alongside half a peeled onion and 2 bay leaves. Carefully bring to the boil (be careful it doesn´t boil over). Then remove from the heat and set aside to infuse until needed.

Next, prepare the meat sauce. Place a large frying pan over a low heat and gently heat the olive oil. Add the mince meat and cook until browned and crumbly. Then remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon, leaving the fat/juices behind. Put the meat into a bowl and set aside for now.
Add the onions and garlic to the juices in the frying pan and cook for a few minutes until starting to soften. Then add in the chopped peppers and fry for a couple minutes more.
Return the meat to the frying pan and pour in the red wine. Bring to a simmer and cook until the wine has completely evaporated (about 5 minutes).
Next, add in the chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, beef stock, rosemary and bay leaves, generously season with salt and pepper and stir until well combined. Bring the sauce to a gently simmer, cover the frying pan with a lid and leave to cook for at least an hour.
Near the end of the cooking time, you can prepare the Béchamel sauce. Remove the onion and bay leaves from the milk and transfer the milk to a jug/or mug for now. You can then use the same pot you used to infuse the milk to make the sauce.

Start by carefully melting the butter over a low heat, then add in all of the flour at once and stir into a thick paste (known as a roux). Cook the roux for about a minute to cook out the flour taste but be carefully not to brown it too much. Next, add a small amount of the milk and stir until completely incorporated into the roux. Repeat this until all of the milk is used up, stirring well between each addition, until you have a smooth sauce (more tips for making a Béchamel sauce here). Season to taste with a little ground nutmeg, salt and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 180°C.

To assemble the lasagne, start by spooning in a third of the meat sauce into the bottom of the oven-proof dish, followed by a layer of pasta, then béchamel sauce and finally a few slices of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat this until you have 3 layers of pasta, finishing with a layer of white sauce and mozzarella. Sprinkle the grated cheddar over the top in an even layer.
Bake the lasagne in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, until the pasta is cooked, the filling is bubbling and the top is a lovely golden brown colour.

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