Using cottage cheese in lasagne instead of bechamel

[xsquared]

When I make a vegetarian lasagne, I usually just do the following layers:

Roast vegetarian and tomatoes sauce mix, lasagne sheet, bechamel, veg sauce, sheet, repeat until I have about 4 layers and top with bechamel amn extra cheese.

For dinner tonight, I'd like to use up the spinach from our veg box and I've also got some cottage cheese. Does cottage cheese with spinach work well together in lasagne or ruin it? I know ricotta is usually paire with spinach, but have read mixed reviews about cottage cheese.

Thanks.

You can def use cottage cheese in place of ricotta, but it works best if you use full-fat.

I was going to say exactly this. Needs to be full fat.

yes, it works. I use cottage cheese in my standard veg lasagne . I use a fork to mash it so the curds are less obvious and would add a bit of tomato sauce to the upper layer before the extra cheese so there is more liquid for the pasta to absorb.

They do this a lot in America. Probably because Italian immigrants couldn’t find ricotta, so they substituted cottage cheese.

When the use cottage cheese, they usually mix the cottage cheese with a whole egg.

Yeah well, if you buy really cheap mozzarella it tastes like compacted cottage cheese anyhow!

handbt used bechamel on lasagne for nearly 40 years as ex mil (southern Italian in southern Italy) doesn’t use it..

If you’re using dry lasagne sheets they’ll soak up any moisture and leave you with dry cottage cheese pellets between the sheets.
I’d whizz it up with some milk, plain yoghurt, diluted stock cube or just water to make a béchamel consistency.

Thanks everyone for the tips.

Luckily, I do have full fat Langley farm cottage cheese, and I will whizz up some mixed with greek yoghurt to make it less lumpy.

Well, I did it. Whizzed the cottage cheese with a bit of milk to get rid of the lumps, added the egg and chopped spinach.

Overall vendor. It was okay, but it definitely had a "less fat version" taste to it. dd prefers the lasagne with the bechamel.

Well done! It was a fun little experiment. I tried it once and have the same opinion. Not amazing, but perfectly acceptable in a pinch.

Verdict not vendor.