Fresh Spinach and Sun-Dried Tomato Lasagna Recipe

Wilt the Spinach

Heat a splash of olive oil in your largest skillet over medium heat and add the garlic for about 30 seconds, just until it smells sweet. Add the spinach in big handfuls, stirring as each batch collapses to make room for the next.

The whole pile is done in 4 to 5 minutes, when the leaves are dark green and limp and there is liquid pooling in the pan. Tip it all into a colander in the sink and let it cool for 10 minutes.

Squeeze the Spinach Bone-Dry

This is the step that decides whether your lasagna is sliceable. Pile the cooled spinach into the center of a clean kitchen towel, gather the corners, and twist hard over the sink.

Keep twisting until no more liquid comes out, then twist a few more times. Under-squeezed spinach is the number one cause of a soupy lasagna. Pull the compressed ball apart with your fingers so it does not bake as one dense clump.

Bind the Ricotta Filling

In a large bowl, stir together the ricotta, the egg, most of the Parmesan, the nutmeg, salt, and pepper. The egg is doing real work here: as it bakes it sets the cheese into a soft custard, so the layer slices cleanly instead of running out the side of the square.

Fold in the squeezed spinach and the chopped basil. The mixture should be thick enough to hold a spoon upright. If it looks loose or watery at this point, your ricotta or your spinach still has liquid in it.

Ready the Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Sauce

Drain oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes well and slice them into thin strips. If yours came dry-packed, cover them with hot water for 15 minutes, drain, and pat them dry before slicing.

Stir about a third of the strips into the tomato sauce and leave the rest for the layers. Because sun-dried tomatoes are thirsty, they will drink from the sauce as the lasagna bakes, which is exactly what you want them to do instead of drinking from the noodles.

Layer the Lasagna

Start with a thin coat of sauce across the bottom of the dish. That layer keeps the first sheet of pasta from gluing itself to the pan and scorching, and it gives the bottom noodles something to hydrate from.

Build in this order and repeat three times: noodles, a third of the ricotta and spinach mixture spread thin, a scatter of sun-dried tomato strips, sauce, then mozzarella. Finish with a fourth layer of noodles, the last of the sauce, and the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan on top.

Resist the urge to load each layer up. Thin, even layers heat through and set; thick ones stay cool in the middle and slump when you cut them. If a layer looks generous, spread it out further rather than piling it higher.

Using regular noodles instead? Boil them 2 minutes short of the box time, then simmer your sauce for 10 minutes to thicken it. No-boil sheets need a looser sauce because they absorb liquid as they bake, while boiled noodles have already taken on their water and need a thicker one.

Bake Covered, Then Uncovered

Grease one side of a sheet of foil, or tent it into a low dome, and cover the dish greased side down. Foil laid flat on bare cheese will bond to it and tear the top off when you pull it away.

Bake covered at 375F for 35 minutes. Trapped steam is what cooks the noodles through, especially no-boil sheets, which rely on that humid environment to soften. Then remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes to dry the surface and brown the cheese into golden, bubbling patches.

It is ready when the edges bubble slowly and a knife slides into the center with no resistance from the pasta.

Rest It. This Is Not Optional.

Set the pan on a rack and leave it alone for 20 to 30 minutes. Lasagna cut straight from the oven collapses into a puddle no matter how carefully you built it, because the cheese is still molten and the starch has not set.

During the rest the ricotta firms, the mozzarella tightens, and the noodles finish absorbing the last of the sauce. This is the single most-skipped step in lasagna, and skipping it undoes all the water management you just did.