Do I freeze the lasagna before or after I cook it?

Sure as long as it doesn’t have cottage cheese.

It will most certainly have cottage cheese! It’s one of the best parts of lasagna!

@Dutchess_III Thanks, but I will stick to my turkey necks that I am cooking now In the oven. Will be ready in a hour or so.

Yes. Scrawny turkey necks are so much yummier than cheesie lasagna!

Only cost $2.00

I don’t know for sure, but I would expect you would freeze it after cooking, so you can just heat it up later and know it was cooked. Freezing the pre-cooked lasagna, would mean somehow thawing it and then cooking it, which I imagine (but don’t know) might have issues. (If you’re making enough, and want to try it, you could experiment with freezing some pre-cooked.)

Bake it first but you might want to put the top cheese on just before removing from oven so that when you reheat it the cheese can then brown. I always made about five big pans of lasagna for Christmas each year with plans to freeze one of them intact.

Another way is to cook it, cool it, slice it, and then wrap it up in individual portions.

Now I really am in the mood for lasagna. :)

Also, I hope you are really using Ricotta and not cottage cheese.

I’ll be there with bells on. Sounds good.

I’m using both @MollyMcGuire, and about a thousand other cheeses. I’m making half with hamburger and the other half just cheese, for me.
I like the idea of individual portions.

Slobber…. Is there no other subject in the Cosmos other than food?

@Dutchess_III When you decide to take it or some out of the freezer, have some type of sauce on hand. It always seems to need some extra sauce after being frozen. Hope you have great success and gain a pound. :)

LOL! I just might! Man, I got some good cheese. Provolone, mozzarella, I don’t know what all. I got some spinach dip in a white cheeses sauce because it looked good! (Oh crap. I forgot the Parmesan….)
Half of the sauce will be home made. I got spaghetti sauce, but I’m going to add my own onion, green pepper, diced tomatoes and baby port mushrooms and let them simmer all day.

I just woke up last Saturday with an odd craving for lasagna, but I don’t want the meat.

Pretty sure Jellies are going to be cooking lasagna this week, am I right?!

Havarti, jack, cream cheese.

Will be now. Either that, or me and Mama Bear will be be going out for Italian.

Bake, let it sit for several hours to allow the flavors to blend, then freeze.

I’d bake it first and I think anybody else would, too, although there could be exceptions…

I am not going to answer your question but I will make your life much better.

Lasagna is the Tiffany Trump to Ivanka. I’m not sure what that means… Kinda drunk. But what I am saying is lasagna is garbage and you need to roll manicotti.

I love manicotti but hated making it. Stuffing the noodles was a nightmare (noodles would tear). Then I googled tips for stuffing the shells. Do not cook the noodles. Stuff them uncooked and add a few spoons of water to the sauce and they come out perfect. What was once a yearly treat is now a thing I do a few times a month.

I just shove cheese and spinach in the tubes and the world rejoices.

I would cook it first so I can thaw and microwave when I want a piece. I’d freeze it in 2 person serving size. It will defrost fairly quickly in the smaller size out in the counter I think.

I think you can freeze it before baking, I’m pretty sure frozen lasagna bought in the supermarket is sold that way.

@johnpowell I guess you solved your problem with the manicotti, but what I usually tell manicotti people is why not just make stuffed shells? Easy to spoon the stuffing right into the pasta and bake. I do cook the pasta first though, maybe your method would work with the shells too.

He DID make stuffed shells @JLeslie. And he figured out that they were easier to stuff if they weren’t cooked first, and the extra water in the sauce made them perfectly cooked when they were done.

I got this “oven ready” lasagna because that’s all they had. You don’t boil it ahead of time. Just put it in the pan as is. I guess it will be easier to work with. Hope it tastes as good.

^ “Hope it tastes as good.”

It does, don’t worry.

Thanks.

Got Parmesan! I’ll get crackin’ tomorrow.

@Dutchess_III I think he stuffed the manicotti and mistakenly called them shells. Maybe I misinterpreted what he wrote.

Doesn’t matter @JLeslie. He prefers manicotti over shells. And they could be considered a type of shell.

The sauce is smelling good!
I think I’m not going to cook the hamburger before I add it. That way all the juices from the cooking hamburger will find their way through that half of the lasagna. What do you guys think?

Cook the hamburger and drain the fat.
I use a mix of Italian sausage and hamburger. I use some of the sauce and put it in the meat mixture before layering it on the noodles.

I know what the standard is. However decades ago we lived next door to a Vietnamese woman who was studying for her citizenship test. She asked me to help. I said, “Sure.” I know now I could never pass a citizen ship test!
As a way of thank you she made us some chicken egg rolls. OMG, they were so good, so I asked her to show me how.
One of the things she did was cut up the chicken and put it in the egg roll, raw.
She said, “I know you would cook the chicken first and I never understand that. The chicken will cook when you fry the egg roll. You Americans always cook your food twice! That make no sense!”

So why not use the hamburger, raw?

@Dutchess_III 20 to 25 % fat will have your lasagna swimming in fat.

I know. But that’s Rick’s half. He would like that. I think it’s gross. I’m going to take a piece of lasagna and insert it edge on to divide the two sides. I’ll break the other lasagna’s in half before I layert them in so that a barrier will slide between the two halves.

Well, I cooked the hamburger. There was nothing to drain off….

You have hamburger or ground sirloin ? ?

Hamburger. It seemed a bit odd to me too, but come to think of it, I haven’t had to drain hamburger in years.

Well it’s in the oven and my back is freaking killing me.

I would definitely cook it first, then freeze it. It should be thawed in the fridge before heating again in the oven or microwave. I like the idea of cutting it up into individual portions before freezing. That way, you can pull out one or two pieces for a dinner. If it’s for a friend, as a gift, you can leave it in one big casserole pan. You can get those big foil ones at the dollar store. Just make sure to let your friends know that they can’t put those in the microwave. I know, sometimes you gotta tell people stuff, else they don’t know.

Can you make one vegetarian for me? I would add sauteed mushrooms, and maybe some fake Italian sausage.

I just made a lasagna-like casserole, but instead of noodles, I used cauliflower florets. Instead of marinara sauce I used Dave’s Gourmet Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce. I used both ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese. Omg! It was an experiment, but it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

I made half of it with only cheese. I added mushrooms, onions and green peppers to the sauce and bubbled them half the day.

Dammmm..