Thank you to
tx smoker
and
yankee2bbq
for the inspiration and recipes. I love lasagna, but have never cooked one and never would have thought to smoke one! Also, when I’ve made “red sauce” for spaghetti over the years it’s usually been store bought, that I may enhance a bit depending on laziness factor, and done almost immediately prior to dumping in meat then onto the pasta. I never thought to simmer and rest a day out. So, I smashed their two recipes together for my families Sunday meal. I used all of Roberts recipe, but substituted the regular sugar with Justin’s brown sugar and used Justin’s measurements as a guide to make a larger batch.
Roberts heat (red pepper & Cayenne) and coffee intrigued me as well as Justin’s beef broth used in the red sauce! Also, as recommended, I used 6 fresh tomatoes, stewed in the sauce to remove skin, cored and crushed instead of canned diced tomatoes, spicy sausage for the meat, and diced up a medium onion that I initially heated with EVOO and garlic into the sauce pot prior to the remaining red sauce ingredients.
Red sauce made a day prior (Saturday), simmered for 6 hours, then rested overnight. The flavor was awesome.
Sunday started heating the sauce again then cooked the spicy sausage, but added a bit more garlic and diced onion into the cooking sausage. Drained and mixed the meat with the sauce to barely simmer for a few hours.
I decided to go with Roberts choice to pre boil the noodles al dente since I’d be using his same smoking technique and my wife wanted brown rice noodles that I am even less familiar with than regular pasta.
Used aluminum pans because I get yelled at if her casserole dishes are used on the smoker. Light coat of EVOO, followed by a smear of the sauce. Then layered as Robert directed with pasta, ricotta, fresh grated mozz, fresh grated Parmesan, meat sauce, pasta, etc. I ran out of room before ingredients so I made another pan, but included slices of ham as a layer (My wife looked concerned by the ham addition, but was happy with the results).
Onto the Pellet cooker at 350 with apple, 50 degrees and rainy, glass or two of wine, out at about 45 minutes.
These tasted amazing! Had to cut off hardened pasta edge though! I am not refined enough to know what elements made a difference, but the sauce and final conglomeration was incredible. I’ll steal some flavor words from Google; The spiciness, earthy, salty umami flavors rolled around in the cheesy mix perfectly with just a bit of sweetness. I forgot some fresh herbs at the end, but will correct next time, but Wow. We tore through the pans and I had to hide a bit for lunch today.
I’ll say that the ham as a layer to the lasagna was a big surprise hit. When I was a kid a local Italian/pizza place in CF Iowa would do Ham Manicotti, so the flavor brought back some little league memories. If you haven’t tried it, please give it a go, you won’t be disappointed.
Again, big thank you to Robert for starting the thread and providing the recipe/kick start and to Justin for adding on his family recipe for me to play with!
tx smoker
and
yankee2bbq
for the inspiration and recipes. I love lasagna, but have never cooked one and never would have thought to smoke one! Also, when I’ve made “red sauce” for spaghetti over the years it’s usually been store bought, that I may enhance a bit depending on laziness factor, and done almost immediately prior to dumping in meat then onto the pasta. I never thought to simmer and rest a day out. So, I smashed their two recipes together for my families Sunday meal. I used all of Roberts recipe, but substituted the regular sugar with Justin’s brown sugar and used Justin’s measurements as a guide to make a larger batch.Roberts heat (red pepper & Cayenne) and coffee intrigued me as well as Justin’s beef broth used in the red sauce! Also, as recommended, I used 6 fresh tomatoes, stewed in the sauce to remove skin, cored and crushed instead of canned diced tomatoes, spicy sausage for the meat, and diced up a medium onion that I initially heated with EVOO and garlic into the sauce pot prior to the remaining red sauce ingredients.
Red sauce made a day prior (Saturday), simmered for 6 hours, then rested overnight. The flavor was awesome.
Sunday started heating the sauce again then cooked the spicy sausage, but added a bit more garlic and diced onion into the cooking sausage. Drained and mixed the meat with the sauce to barely simmer for a few hours.
I decided to go with Roberts choice to pre boil the noodles al dente since I’d be using his same smoking technique and my wife wanted brown rice noodles that I am even less familiar with than regular pasta.
Used aluminum pans because I get yelled at if her casserole dishes are used on the smoker. Light coat of EVOO, followed by a smear of the sauce. Then layered as Robert directed with pasta, ricotta, fresh grated mozz, fresh grated Parmesan, meat sauce, pasta, etc. I ran out of room before ingredients so I made another pan, but included slices of ham as a layer (My wife looked concerned by the ham addition, but was happy with the results).
Onto the Pellet cooker at 350 with apple, 50 degrees and rainy, glass or two of wine, out at about 45 minutes.
These tasted amazing! Had to cut off hardened pasta edge though! I am not refined enough to know what elements made a difference, but the sauce and final conglomeration was incredible. I’ll steal some flavor words from Google; The spiciness, earthy, salty umami flavors rolled around in the cheesy mix perfectly with just a bit of sweetness. I forgot some fresh herbs at the end, but will correct next time, but Wow. We tore through the pans and I had to hide a bit for lunch today.
I’ll say that the ham as a layer to the lasagna was a big surprise hit. When I was a kid a local Italian/pizza place in CF Iowa would do Ham Manicotti, so the flavor brought back some little league memories. If you haven’t tried it, please give it a go, you won’t be disappointed.
Again, big thank you to Robert for starting the thread and providing the recipe/kick start and to Justin for adding on his family recipe for me to play with!
