Open Lori Naka’s recipe binder to this page and you can tell exactly which one is the favourite — it’s the page with the most pen marks on it. Numbers crossed out and rewritten, an extra ingredient squeezed into the margin, a whole line struck through with the confidence of someone who’s made this enough times to know better than the original recipe did.
That’s the version we’re sharing here.
It started life as a fairly standard tomato-sausage lasagna, the kind with a clever trick: skip boiling the noodles entirely, just soak them in hot water while the sauce comes together. One pot saved, one less thing to think about. But over the years it’s drifted into something a little richer, a little cheesier, a little more Naka family kitchen than recipe card. The sausage stayed. The Parmesan got crossed out. The mozzarella, somewhat famously, did not.
LORI’S TOMATO-SAUSAGE LASAGNA
Serves 8 | Prep: 40 minutes | Total: 2 hours 30 minutes
The Sauce:
- 2 tsp. olive oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1½ tsp. dried Italian seasoning
- ¼ tsp. red-pepper flakes
- 1 lb sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
- 1 can (28 ounces) whole peeled tomatoes in puree
- 1 jar pasta sauce
- Coarse salt and ground pepper
Everything else:
- 12 dried lasagna noodles (about 10 ounces), uncooked
- 3–4 c. shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1½ pounds) — yes, really
1. Get the noodles soaking. Fill your 9-by-13-inch baking dish about two-thirds with hot tap water, drop the noodles in, and arrange them so they’re pointing in different directions — this keeps them from gluing themselves together. Now leave them alone. They have a job to do while you make the sauce.
2. Build the sauce. Warm the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Toss in the onion, garlic, Italian seasoning, and red-pepper flakes, and let everything cook down until lightly golden, about 5 minutes. Add the sausage, breaking it up as it browns, until it’s cooked through — another 5 minutes or so. Now add the canned tomatoes (crush them with your spoon as they go in) and the jar of pasta sauce. Bring it all to a boil, then drop it down to a steady simmer and let it thicken for about 20 minutes, stirring now and then. You’ll end up with somewhere around 8 cups of sauce. Taste it. Season it. Trust your instincts.
3. Layer it up. Heat the oven to 350°F. Drain the noodles, lay them on a baking sheet, and blot them dry. Spoon a cup of sauce into the bottom of the dish — just enough to keep things from sticking. Lay down 4 noodles, slightly overlapping. Spread on 2 cups of sauce, then a generous, no-holding-back layer of mozzarella. Repeat that once more. Finish with the last of the noodles, the rest of the sauce, and whatever mozzarella you have left — pile it on. Cover the whole thing tightly with foil.
4. Bake, uncover, bake again. One hour covered. Then pull the foil off and let it go another 30 minutes, until the top is bubbling and turning those deep golden-brown spots that mean it’s ready. Let it sit for 20 minutes before cutting — it needs the rest, and so do you.
A Note from the Family Recipe Box
This one’s a keeper for a reason. It’s the dish that gets requested before birthdays, the one that shows up when someone’s had a long week, the smell that means someone’s home. If you’re trying to coax the kids back for a visit, this is your move — there’s something about a lasagna bubbling away in the oven that makes “I’ll think about it” turn into “what time should I be there?”
Lori’s tweaks — the jar of pasta sauce stirred in alongside the tomatoes, and the extra mozzarella standing in for the Parmesan — are small, but they’re the difference between a lasagna and this lasagna. Make it a day ahead if you can; it only gets better!
