AIBU to think you can't make lasagne with raw mince?

[HetMeal]

I had a mild debate with a friend today who says you don't need to cook/brown the meat before you put it in the lasagne. She would do pasta sheets, white sauce, tomato basil sauce from a jar, raw minced beef, in layers.

I do it the normal way, cooking a tomatoey meat sauce first and layering that with bechamel and pasta sheets. She said using raw meat is a perfectly legitimate time saver and tastes fine.

I can't get my head around this, and wondering whether anyone else does it this way?

It would be cooked just not necessary nice to eat. If you don't have time to cook lasagne (far enoug, it is faffy), I think the best option is just not to cook it. Or do what we do and make double batch of bolagnase a day or two earlier. Sometimes we even make a triple batch and use it for chilli in-between.

[quote AmelieTaylor]@Hoppinggreen

Is that where the quote came from or did they use the well known quote -do you know? I thought it was much older than that?

But back to the lasagne - that sounds vile.[/quote]
That’s where I first heard it
I also might have paraphrased a bit

While I personally cook my sauce for a long time beforehand, you can certainly still have a nice lasagna with a quick browning and simmer for like 15 minutes. It may not be as good but it will still be tasty (not sure about the jar sauce though!)

Raw mince is obviously the devil's work. I don't even understand how you can physically layer it.

I'd do it your way, but it would just cook in the oven if you used raw mince.

@pinkearedcow

Sacrilege Blondeshavemorefun! There is no hope for you, I am afraid.

😂😂😂😂

I always make my sauce the day before so it can simmer slowly with wine and herbs etc.

Just throw the whole friend away.

Sounds absolutely revolting. Bleugh 🤮

Lasagne is not a dish that should be rushed.........

I'm sure there was of those how to make the perfect lasagne things in the guardian - a take away was massively (almost overbrowning imo) the mince in the oven. It worked!

I always watch people cook before i eat there - your friend is why..

@ThumbWitchesAbroad

I wouldn't like it done that way.

Reminds me of my first lodger, years ago, who made tuna pasta bake but didn't realise that you had to cook the pasta first before putting it in the oven. It was very crunchy! I suppose you could get away with not boiling the pasta first, if you had enough liquid sauce in there, but I doubt it would work very well.

I usually do it that way. And I'm fussy!

I have down to an art the ability to guesstimate how much water to add. Sometimes I miss and the sauce lacks intensity, but not often.

I usually use a really rich sauce I've made ahead of time, preferably with chorizo. In goes pasta, barely cover with water. Layer of sauce, cheese, breadcrumbs if I've got some to use up.
Bake for an hour. 5min assembly, 1 hour to cook.

I'm prepared to risk the experiment @OccultGnuAsWell . Though I only use 5% mince which isn't available free flow frozen so that might be tricky. I already use the hideous slimming world shortcut which is substituting the Béchamel sauce for heavily seasoned yogurt and/or cottage cheese. I have no shame, clearly.

So it's just a lump of cooked meat?

It sounds a bit like a Rachel Green recipe.

I hope I’m never invited to hers for dinner.

Ive always cooked the mince first. Browned it off at least. I think it seals in flavour?
I could wrong.

It would cook fine, but the mince would look a greyish colour , a bit off putting.

@Ocsetldil uncle Rodger would not allow neice and nephew to kill Chinese food in this way

You could, but it won't taste half as good as if you slow cook the meat sauce first.

You could, might not be as tasty, but maximising flavour isn't always the point.

I have a slow cooker sloppy joe recipe, the whole point of which is to be very quick, and you put in the mince raw. But it's not meant to take you to some new level of cooking, it's meant to be simple to put together in the morning before work and give you something reasonably tasty for the whole family in the evening.

If I want to really go all out with lasagna I use béchamel sauce rather than ricotta, but I don't do it 90% of the time, it adds enough work that I often don't have the time.

@LadyLindaT

It sounds a bit like a Rachel Green recipe.

Only if the bechamel is swapped for custard

LaganinaBubble

MotorwayDiva

She's is BU, everyone knows you make the ragu and have bolognese the first night and lasagne the next.

This is so genius, I have no idea why we don't do that in this house! Making twice as much ragu the next time for sure!!!

Make three times as much. Day three - lasagna toasties!

The umami comes from browning the meet, it will cook (boil) in the oven but just be boiled meet.

@MotorwayDiva

She's is BU, everyone knows you make the ragu and have bolognese the first night and lasagne the next.

100% true!! My “cheat” lasagne involves flinging everything for the ragu into the slow cooker all day instead of living slaving over it on the hob 🙈🤣 it wouldn’t even cross my mind to layer raw mince 🤢

That method sounds horrid. Got to be browned mince. I've tried jarred ragu but I'm not a fan.

Erm.
Never heard of that and cant quite picture it. Surely the bolognese sauce needs making and simmering to perfection first?