Best-Ever No-Boil Gluten-Free Lasagna

 (see this lasagna? It's gluten free. And I made it myself.)

When I was growing up, my Mom made the most *wonderful* lasagna. Moist and saucy and full of melted cheese. None of this dry stuff with a little sauce and a trace of cheese scraped between the gooey noodles. The other thing that I loved about my mom's recipe: no boiling the lasagna pasta before making the lasagna! There's plenty of of moisture in the sauce, and it just seeps into the noodles and cooks them as the whole thing bakes. No more painstaking pulling apart of boiled lasagna, hoping it doesn't tear (or cling together 3 pieces thick). It's crazy-easy!


And the best news is, it is elementary to transform this recipe to a gluten free version (main switch, obviously, substituting GF lasagna noodles for the wheat kind). AND - it is utterly indistinguishable from the gluten kind! I can have as much lasagna as I want, just the same as if I was a "normal" gluten eating person! No deprivation here! (see, I told you there is room for *plenty* of fat and carbs in the gluten free diet).

This brings me to a point I love to make: for many recipes (actually for just about anything except yeast bread), transforming a gluten recipe to a gluten free version is simple, once you know which brands are gluten free, and what a good flour mix is (if there's flour involved): voila! You can make all the things you made before, but now they are gluten free!

Now to the point. Here is the lasagna recipe:

Best Ever, Gluten Free, No-Boil Lasagna
*obviously, make sure that your sauce, cheese, etc, is all gluten free*
Ingredients:
1 (15-16oz) container Ricotta
1/2 c parmesan cheese
2 eggs
2 T dried parsley
2 (26-oz) jars pasta sauce combined w/1 cup water
1 (1-pound) package uncooked gluten free lasagna (I use Tinkyada, but there may be others out there)
1 lb ground beef or ground sausage, cooked & drained
1/2 tsp garlic powder (or to taste!)
2 tsp dried oregano
4 c (1 pound) shredded mozarella cheese
Dash pepper

1) Preheat oven to 350.

2) In a bowl, combine ricotta, Parmesan cheese, eggs and parsley. Mix well.

3) Mix together pasta sauce, cooked ground beef or sausage, oregano, garlic & pepper.

4) On bottom of a 15x9* greased baking dish, spread 1 c pasta sauce. Top with a layer of lasagna noodles. On top of that, spread half the ricotta mixture, then half the remaining meat/pasta sauce, and then half the mozzarella. Repeat layering, and finish with the last of the mozzarella cheese.

5) Cover tightly with foil and bake for 1 hour or so until hot and bubbly. Let stand 15 minutes before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.
------------
Notes:

-I don't have a 15x9 pan, so I just use 13x9 and it works fine.

- I never use up the whole box of lasagna. The noodles swell as they cook/bake, so I just put them next to each other long ways on the bottom, and then break off a piece to fill in the empty space across the one end that they aren't long enough to cover.

- It never hurts to use more cheese or more ricotta (that's my motto. Although the portions in the recipe are good, too!)

- I usually remove the foil for the last 15-30 minutes of baking to let the cheese get brown on top, but you have to be careful that the mozzarella doesn't stick to the foil when you do this. Usually my lasagna is so far up in the pan that I have issues with that. However, there is no NEED to remove the foil.

- I put a cookie sheet or similar item in the oven below the lasagna pan to catch sauce drips that bubble up and spill out while it's baking, just to help with cleanup later on.