Lasagne XL
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Cook time: 
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Makes: 80-90 portions
 
Ingredients
Lasagne
  • 7 kg minced beef
  • 70 gr ground coriander
  • 35 gr paprika powder
  • 3 kg onion
  • 2 kg celery
  • 4 kg carrot
  • 250 gr garlic
  • 1.6 kg tomato puree
  • 10 kg tinned chopped tomatoes
  • 1 kg milk
  • 70 gr thyme
  • 70 gr oregano
  • 3 kg bell pepper
  • 3 kg courgette
  • 2 kg lasagna sheets
White sauce
  • 800 gr butter
  • 800 gr flour
  • 6.4 kg milk
  • 50 gr lemon juice
  • 3 kg grated cheese
Instructions
Preparations
  1. Dice onion, celery, carrot, garlic. These can be mixed once cut.
  2. Dice the bell pepper and courgettes.
Cooking
  1. Preheat the oven to 180 °C and grease the lasagne dishes with oil or butter.
  2. Stir fry the minced beef until brown and broken up. Season with ground coriander, paprika powder, salt, and pepper. Remove from pan and set aside for later.
  3. In the left over beef fat, sweet off the onion, celery, carrot, garlic until soft and semi-cooked.
  4. Add to the vegetables the tomato puree and cook for a couple of minutes. Next, stir in the tinned chopped tomatoes, milk, thyme and oregano and bring the sauce to the boil. Season to taste.
  5. When the vegetables are cooked, blitz the sauce with a stick blender. Add some extra water of milk if the sauce is too thick to puree properly. It doesn’t need to be super smooth.
  6. Return to the pot and stir through the cooked minced beef and bell pepper and courgette. Season to taste.
White sauce
  1. In a different pan, melt the butter, add the flour to make a roux and cook on a low heat for several minutes. Add the cold milk little by little and bring to the boil to thicken while whisking.
  2. Simmer for 10 min or until the béchamel sauce is thick. Season and add lemon juice to taste.
Finish
  1. Assemble the lasagne by placing a third of the tomato sauce in an oven proof dish, followed by a layer of lasagne sheets, a second layer of sauce, another layer of lasagne sheets, a final layer of sauce and then the final layer of lasagne sheets. Finish with the white sauce.
  2. Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake in the oven for 25 min or until the top is golden and the pasta is cooked.
Stuff to know
This quantity will yield 80-90 portions.
Some people assemble the lasagna and keep it in the fridge until finishing it in the oven. However, it will take considerably longer to cook since the uncooked lasagna will be stone cold in the centre. It is recommended therefore to make it from scratch and cook it soon after assembly.
Keep the lasagna sheets from overlapping each other. Otherwise, they won’t cook properly.
The (optional) step of blitzing the sauce with the vegetables before adding the cooked beef with the bell pepper and courgette not only gives the sauce a rich flavour and consistency but it also makes the vegetables less of a problem for children. The courgette and bell pepper will be cooked in the oven and retain their crunchiness.
The sauce needs to be a bit thinner than a standard bolognese sauce since some of the extra liquid will be absorbed by the pasta sheets when they cook.

Variations:
Add some red wine or green pesto (beware of nut allergies) to the sauce.
Infuse the béchamel sauce with a couple of bay leaves.
Cook off with the minced beef some lardons if desired.
Add some spinach to the sauce.
Recipe by Jeroen Valkenier Recipes at https://jpvalkenier.com/lasagne-xl/