Cook it Fresh

Pizza Hut Lasagna on the left, homemade on the right

I love homemade lasagna but it is one of the more time consuming and expensive pasta dishes to make at home, so I’ve been considering alternatives.  When I first decided to do a post on lasagna, I thought of comparing homemade to Stoffer’s frozen lasagna.  However, I already knew that I do not like Stoffer’s lasagna, so it seemed an unfair comparison from the start.  Then someone told me that you can now order lasagna from Pizza Hut and that it is actually pretty good.  We were already planning on having dinner with my sister’s family on Halloween, before heading out for some trick-or-treating, so we decided to have a lasagna testing party.  Below is the homemade lasagna recipe I used for the comparison.

Sausage and Basil Lasagna

Makes one 9 by 13 inch pan, about 9 servings

I often make this lasagna vegetarian, but since Pizza Hut’s web site said that their lasagna had sausage in it, I decided to make mine with sausage this time.   It is very tasty either way.  My least favorite part of making lasagna is boiling the noodles and trying to layer them without tearing.  I have tried using no-boil lasagna noodles in the past,  but found them to be a little rubbery.  This time around I saw that Barilla made some no-boil noodles that looked better than others and they turned out to be wonderful.  I highly recommend them and will add them to my products list at the top left hand of the page if you want to see what the box looks like.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 pound italian sausage
  6 cups jarred or homemade marinara sauce (2 jars or 2 recipes of homemade)
• 1 15 oz. container ricotta cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 package dry no boil lasagna noodles

1.  Brown the sausage in a large skillet until it is fully cooked.  Add the marinara sauce and let simmer for about 20 minutes to let the flavors meld.

2.  Combine the ricotta, 1/2 cup of Parmesan, salt and pepper in a medium bowl and mix well.

3.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Pour 1 cup of the meat sauce in the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch pan and layer the lasagna as follows:

First Layer:  4 lasagna noodles, 1/3 of ricotta mixture, 1 cups sauce, half of the basil, 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

Second Layer:  4 lasagna noodles, 1/3 of ricotta mixture, 1 cups sauce, rest of basil, 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

Third Layer:  4 lasagna noodles, rest of ricotta mixture, 1 cup sauce, 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

Fourth Layer:  4 lasagna noodles, rest of the sauce

4. Cover lasagna with foil and bake in the preheated 350 degree oven for 1 hour.  Remove the foil, sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses over the top of the lasagna and bake another 5-10 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly and browned.

While my pan of lasagna was baking, we got online and ordered a small (2 serving) pan of  Pizza Hut Tuscani lasagna.  It arrived just as I was taking mine out of the oven, and we all sat down to test them out.  I admit that I am a big fan of Pizza Hut pizza.  I know it’s not the freshest pizza in the world, but I just like something about the flavor and I probably let that color my hopes for their lasagna.  Those hopes were cruelly dashed the moment I opened the box of Tuscani lasagna (actually, it might have started before that when I noticed that they purposely misspelled “Tuscany”).

The lasagna looked burnt and greasy and pretty much tasted the same.  It tasted so salty that it was hard to make out any other flavor and the noodles were tough.  Also, when I served the lasagna onto a plate it looked like a pile of oily mush with no discernible layering that one expects in lasagna.  My sister took one bite and threw the rest out, opting for a larger piece of homemade instead.  The homemade lasagna, in contrast, had a fresh  tomato and basil flavor, the noodles were tender and there was not a layer of grease sitting on top.  Although homemade lasagna  takes more time and effort (almost two hours), the good news is that it costs way less per serving than take out lasagna.  I’m not including the tip or tax in my cost analysis for the Pizza Hut, but I am going to include the mandatory delivery fee that they tacked on in the assumption that most people will order Pizza Hut to be delivered.

I’m going to including two different prices for the homemade lasagna because it varies a lot depending on if you make it with meat or without.  Also, I made mine with organic chicken sausage (one of our tasters doesn’t eat pork), and that was way more expensive than regular Italian sausage, driving the cost per serving up significantly.

Bottom Line: Homemade lasagna is the only way to go.  It’s not something I’m going to make every week, but it is fun to assemble when I have the time and is far superior in flavor and price to Pizza Hut lasagna.

Homemade Lasagna (vegetarian)                                Homemade Lasagna                                                                                                                                                                                                               (with chicken sausage)

Cost:  $1.27 (per serving)                                                           Cost:  $1.93 (per serving)

Time:  1 1/2 hours                                                                       Time:  1 hour 40 minutes

Pizza Hut Lasagna

Cost:  $4.00 (per serving)

Time:  None

Please chime in on the comments if you know of any frozen or delivery lasagnas that you think would taste closer to homemade, I’d love to try them out!