Make Lasagna For One With A Small Loaf Pan

One thing that online recipe developers so often get wrong is assuming that everyone has friends or family around them at every meal and thus everything is proportioned for four, six, or eight servings. Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Developers who do not take solo diners for granted, that's who. Sadly, recipes for just one person are few and far between, although occasionally recipe websites throw us a bone with a suggestion like, "Make this enormous lasagna, then freeze it in individual portions to eat every day for the next two weeks."

Well, if you don't have that much room in the freezer (who does?), nor do you want lasagna that comes with such a long-term commitment, here's a better idea: Make a tiny one in a little loaf pan. Mini foil loaf pans measuring about 6x3 inches can be purchased pretty cheaply, so you need not even invest too heavily in kitchen equipment. They're the kind of thing people use to make itty-bitty banana breads for bake sales or holiday gifting on the cheap. So they typically come in multi-packs, too. This will come in handy in case you do happen to want a freezer full of personal pan-sized lasagnas.

You'll only need a noodle or two to make lasagna for one. There's no need to boil them, either — the easy lasagna shortcut we've all been missing is that the tomato sauce in a standard lasagna recipe is wet enough to cook the noodles as they bake. Break one noodle to fit the pan, then layer it with ricotta and marinara or meat sauce. Sprinkle it with mozzarella if you wish, then repeat the layers and finish off with a generous dusting of parmesan. All measurements can be eyeballed as lasagna is a very forgiving kind of dish.

Once you've assembled your loaf pan lasagna, you have a choice of how to cook it. You can bake it in the oven at 350 F for about 30 minutes or until the noodles are soft and the filling is hot. If you don't want to heat up the oven, another way to cook the lasagna is to put it — pan and all — into a pot on the stove and then fill the pot with water that comes about an inch or so up the sides of the pan. Cover the pan with foil, cover the pot with a lid (or more foil), then simmer the water for half an hour. You could also cook your mini lasagna in the microwave, but only if your loaf pan is made of non-metallic material.