The Biggest Lasagna Mistake You're Making According To Giada De Laurentiis
Surprise, surprise! Italian cuisine is the most popular type of cuisine in the world, as concluded by a Radical Storage study from 2022. And pizza is the most popular dish in the world, which also comes off as unsurprising. Fondue reports that Italian food is characterized by fresh ingredients, simplicity, ease of preparation, and traditional local ingredients, which vary not from one region to another, but often from one village to another.
One of the most prized Italian ingredients is glorious pasta, which comes in a wide array of shapes and sizes. Italian Food Experts reveals that the most popular types of pasta in Italy are tagliatelle, rigatoni, fusilli, spaghetti, and penne, which is the most popular pasta of the bunch. Amazingly, one pasta shape is not among the five most popular varieties: lasagna. This pasta type is actually a fresh or dried pasta sheet made with meat and cheese filling. When baked in the oven, the dish is called lasagna al forno. Lasagna has quite an interesting history, and the first mention of the word dates back to 1282 in Bologna (per 196 Flavors).
If you're like us and like to bake tasty lasagna from time to time, you're probably also making a few mistakes along the way, but nobody's perfect. According to Giada De Laurentiis, we might be making the biggest lasagna mistake in the process.
Season each individual layer when making lasagna
It's well-known that celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis adores Italian cuisine and one dish that she might love just a bit more than other dishes is lasagna. On her website Giadzy, where she exhibits a wonderful selection of high-quality Italian products, the chef also shared a recipe for classic Italian lasagna made with tomato sauce and bechamel sauce. But there's more to lasagna than the classics.
Supermarket Italy reveals that there are many types of traditional lasagna dishes in Italy, such as the classic bolognese variety, the Sicilian lasagna alla Norma with eggplant and ricotta cheese, the Genovese variety with pesto, and the cheesy Taleggio lasagna from Treviso. And in an interview with Bon Appétit, De Laurentiis shared her thoughts on an iconic dish that people often make mistakes with, saying that lasagna is oftentimes too watery and soaked with tomato sauce. Besides, the chef adds, lasagna is sometimes filled with ricotta that's pretty bland flavor-wise.
Finally, De Laurentiis concludes that the biggest mistake when making lasagna is not seasoning each individual layer, so keep that in mind when making your next batch. Alternatively, you can check out the chef's layerless lasagna recipe on Instagram, which is a bit easier to make if you want to avoid layering.