Lasagne al Forno with Bolognese and Béchamel Sauce

Lasagne al forno is my favorite lasagne. I’ve tweaked many different recipes over the years, but always came back to the same conclusion. If you want your lasagne to taste like you’re in Italy - a classic, thick, tomato-based bolognese, with a creamy béchamel sauce - there are no shortcuts to making it. It’ll take time. It’s a process. It’s amazing.

Jump to:

• 🧾 Ingredients
• 🥘 Make the meat sauce
• 🥣 Make the bechamel sauce
• 🥄 Putting it all together
• ⏲️ Baking
• 📝 Recipe

I’m talking 4+ hours total time. It’s not constantly hands-on, but you can’t really leave the house either. So if you’re looking for a recipe that will get your lasagne done in 90 minutes or less, you’ll have to go to one of those big recipe sites with their celebrity chefs, but you’ll never get the flavor and depth of the real thing.

Ok, one shortcut: I normally don’t make my own lasagne sheets from scratch. I buy a pack in the store and cook them fully before assembling the lasagne.

Something else to think about regarding recreating “classic Italian dishes”: A recipe for Lasagne al Forno can actually be found in the book, Apicius, which is a collection of Roman recipes compiled in the 1st century A.D.

But in this original lasagne recipe, two “classic” ingredients were not mentioned at all: Béchamel sauce and tomatoes. Why? Because Béchamel sauce wasn’t invented until the Renaissance and tomatoes weren’t eaten until the mid 16th century. Tomatoes originate from South America (Peru) and were brought to Europe by Spanish conquistadors. They were considered poisonous and only slowly found their way into the kitchen.

It wasn’t until 1889, when the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito invented the Margherita pizza in honor of Queen Margherita of Savoy, that the tomato finally found its place in Italian cuisine and quickly conquered the rest of Europe.

🧾 Ingredients

For the bolognese meat sauce

• Onion
• Celery
• Carrots
• Garlic
• Butter
• Olive oil
• White wine
• Italian plum tomatoes (canned)
• Beef stock
• Heavy cream
• Pancetta
• Ground beef
• Ground pork
• Salt and pepper

For the bechamel sauce

• Butter
• All purpose flour
• Milk
• Salt and pepper

For the lasagne

• Pre-cooked lasagne sheets
• Beef stock
• Parmesan cheese

See the recipe card below for full list of ingredients and their measurements.

I know, it’s a long list, but don’t be daunted by it. The cooking process is straightforward.

🥘 Make the meat sauce

Heat the butter and oil in a large saucepan until sizzling. Then add all the vegetables and pancetta, and stir occasionally for 10 minutes. You want the vegetables to soften up a bit. At this point, your kitchen will already smell of what’s to come.

Now you can lower the heat a bit and add the meats. Gently cook them by stirring and breaking up any clumps.

After about 10 minutes, season with salt & pepper. Add the wine and stir for about 5 minutes until reduced. You may have to turn up the heat a little bit for this step.

So far we’ve been cooking hands-on for 25 minutes. Now add the crushed tomatoes and about a cup of beef stock and bring to a boil.

Next, lower the heat to a gentle simmer, and over the next two hours, occasionally stir and add beef stock as needed to keep the ragu from sticking to the pan.

So it’s been 2-½ hours since we started cooking and your bolognese sauce will taste like no bolognese sauce you’ve ever had before. But wait, there’s one more thing: add the heavy cream, stir very well, and let simmer for another 30 minutes.

And this is what it looks like.

I cook the lasagne sheets while making the Béchamel, so they’ll be ready. Preheat the oven to 375℉. At this point, you can add some more stock to your bolognese (you want the sauce to be pretty runny). If you made the sauce in advance, warm it up at this point.

🥣 Make the bechamel sauce

Let’s make the Béchamel sauce: heat up the milk in a saucepan.

In a different saucepan, melt the butter, add flour, and stir for about 2 minutes. Bring to a boil, slowly add the warmed milk a little bit at a time, while whisking vigorously, until the sauce becomes thick and smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

🥄 Putting it all together

Now let’s put this bad boy together. In a greased 9” x 13” baking dish, add about a third of the bolognese, cover with a quarter of the Bechamel, and add four lasagne sheets. Repeat two more times. Add remaining Bechamel and sprinkle your Parmesan evenly on top.

⏲️ Baking

Bake for about 40-45 minutes and let rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

Have some friends over and look at their faces when they take their first bite. Yes, you were working on the dish for a good 4 hours, but your friend’s smiles and empty plates in no time will more than make up for it.

We told our friends to come visit, to share this “classic” Italian dish. We ended up enjoying it with three different Italian red wines that were all fantastic with this lasagne.

I know, I’m usually more into cooking delicious 30-minute meals with a couple fresh ingredients and otherwise using my essential food pantry, but once in a while, there’s just nothing that beats a slowly cooked meal to incorporate all the flavors together.

Did you make this Lasagne recipe? Let us know in the comments below!

📝 Recipe

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