Ingredients
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2 (15 ounce) cans tomato sauce (Hunt's)
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1/2 green pepper, diced
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1/2 onion, diced
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1 (8 ounce) container mushrooms
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1 teaspoon garlic salt
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1 1/2 lbs ground beef or 1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
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1 (8 ounce) box lasagna noodles
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1 teaspoon butter
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1 (16 ounce) container small curd cottage cheese (not ricotta)
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1/2 cup mayonnaise
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2 -4 cups mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- Brown meat, onion, and green pepper (and mushrooms if desired), adding garlic salt. Drain fat.
- Add tomato sauce and bring to a simmer, cover and cook for at least 1 hour.
- Meanwhile, cook the lasagna noodles in salted water (reserve the cooking liquid) until barely al dente (about 7 minutes) and combine the cottage cheese and mayonnaise in a bowl.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Grease a 13X9 pan with butter. Evaluate the sauce, if it has cooked for a long time and lost a lot of liquid, thin it by adding 1/4 cup at a time of cooking liquid from the noodles. Add as much as desired to get the right consistency: thick but spreadable. This will also make your sauce "sticky" so it will coat the noodles.
- Spoon a thin layer of sauce into the bottom of the dish. Layer noodles (overlapping if necessary), 1/2 meat mixture and 1/2 the cheese mixture.
- Cover with the rest of noodles, meat and cheese mixture. Top with shredded mozzarella.
- You can store this in the refrigerator or freezer at this point until ready to heat. Allow extra time for reheating from cold or frozen state. Spray a sheet of foil with cooking spray and cover the lasagna with it. Bake for 1 hour.
- Uncover and continue baking until the cheese is bubbly and browning.