Single Serving Mini Lasagna

Sometimes you really crave lasagna, but you’re home alone and don’t want to eat lasagna by yourself for the next two weeks. Well, I have found a solution: single serving lasagna!

My boyfriend was sent out of the country quite suddenly for his job, the day after we planned out our entire menu for the week. Obviously, this threw a fork into the mix (pun intended) but I was still intent on sticking to the schedule so all of my freshly purchased ingredients didn’t go bad while he was away.

Normally, when I make lasagna for the two of us, I use a standard square 8×8 pan, which gives us each about two servings each (which are generally saved and portioned out for lunches during the week). This time, I didn’t need the whole lasagna to myself, but I still realllllllly wanted to make lasagna.

I decided the easiest way to make a single serving of lasagna for myself was to use ramekins to cook the lasagna. And instead of cutting up the lasagna noodles and layering them within each ramekin (aka more work than I was willing to put into making lasagna that night) I came to the conclusion that rolling the lasagna and arranging them in the center of the ramekin to be covered with sauce and cheese was the best, and quickest option.

I started by de-casing the chorizo and cooking up the meat until it was crumbly and browned. If you’ve been following my cooking journey, you’ll know that I’m practically obsessed with chorizo. I very rarely even buy ground beef any more and instead opt for chorizo sausage or even bison. I mixed sweet and hot sausage too, because mixing sweet and heat is also something I frequently enjoy doing.

Next, I made the pasta sauce from scratch, using veggies from my garden. I softened the onions, peppers, garlic and fresh tomatoes in some butter for a few minutes before pouring in the tomato sauce and paste.

Then just let the sauce simmer on a medium low heat for about 30 minutes while you prepare the remaining ingredients.

I made the cheese with cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I know I can’t be the only one out there who used to avoid lasagna because I found the ricotta cheese too rich. There’s a fine line when it comes to using ricotta cheese, in my opinion, so I always reach for the cottage cheese instead. Cottage cheese also gives a little better texture to the blend. Plus, if you didn’t tell someone you used cottage cheese instead of ricotta, they likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference (bonus: cottage cheese is also cheaper than ricotta in my neck of the woods).

Let the cheese mix chill while boiling the lasagna noodles. You’ll want the noodles to be a little closer to al dente or else you risk tearing the noodles while handling or rolling them. Rinse the noodles under cold water too, not only to stop the cooking process, but also so they noodles are cool enough to handle while moving to a solid surface to spread the cheese mix onto each noodle.

Grab a ramekin and put a couple tablespoons of chorizo, sauce, and cheese in the bottom. Then roll up each noodle filled with the cheese mix, and stand on their ends, rather than their sides. I found it was easiest to have the end of each lasagna noodle meet in the center to help keep the noodles rolled.

Then just add the remaining chorizo around the standing noodles to keep them upright, pour the rest of sauce over the top of the noodles, and top with cheese.

Pop the lasagna filled ramekin into the oven for 25 minutes, or until warmed through.

It saddens me to say, that out of habit, I still made a second lasagna serving for Nick, even though he’s on the other side of the world. So I ended up having lasagna two nights in a row, but it was so delicious, I didn’t even care. Sorry babe, guess you’ll just have to make this recipe on your own when you get home.