Ree Drummond takes classic lasagna and offers it a wholesome improve together with her vegetarian zucchini lasagna. The Pioneer Lady star swaps out the pasta noodles with veggie and hundreds the dish with cheeses, sauce, mushrooms, and spinach.
Ree Drummond remakes traditional recipes with a wholesome twist
Drummond demonstrated make her veggie lasagna recipe on an episode of The Pioneer Lady devoted to “healthy-ish” recipes. She remade the traditional pasta dish by changing pasta with zucchini “for a wholesome twist on a much-loved dish.”
“Through the years I have found the most success making healthy-ish recipes,” she defined. “I don’t go entire hog and fully change my means of cooking — I simply do little tweaks to my present favourite recipes and I actually love that strategy.”
The Meals Community host added, “Cooking healthy-ish is all about scrumptious meals however simply making little tweaks that gained’t have an effect on the flavour. Enter zucchini lasagna. I’m going to principally substitute common pasta with sheets of zucchini and let me let you know, you gained’t miss a factor.”
The way to make Ree Drummond’s zucchini lasagna recipe
Drummond first sauteed mushrooms, added minced garlic and, since she was making a spinach and mushroom filling, she started working including spinach in batches.
“Substituting strips of zucchini is a extremely wholesome hack,” she defined of her veggie lasagna. “You may principally substitute the lasagna noodles with zucchini, for any type of lasagna you want.”
She continued so as to add extra recent spinach because it wilted down within the pan. “Once I was youthful, zucchini lasagna meant one thing totally totally different,” Drummond defined. “It was really common lasagna utilizing pasta noodles however with a zucchini combination inside. So it was like a veggie lasagna. However over time, zucchini lasagna has come to imply zucchini noodles.”
For the cheese combination, Drummond mixed cottage cheese, parmesan, eggs, parsley, basil, salt, and pepper. “I take advantage of cottage cheese as a substitute of ricotta in my common lasagna,” she shared. “I’ve all the time cherished it. You may completely substitute ricotta for the cottage cheese or you are able to do half and half.”
She continued, “I swear, each time I eat vegetable lasagna like this, I don’t even know meat exists. I don’t miss it in any respect. In fact, the cheese helps.”
Drummond added, “I’m an enormous cheese fan and that’s why I type of like low carb consuming as a result of it nonetheless means that you can eat cheese. I’ve all the time mentioned, I can’t go on any weight loss program the place I’ve to disclaim myself cheese. Cheese is my life.”
‘The Pioneer Lady’ star assembled the lasagna
Drummond’s lasagna got here collectively shortly. She minimize massive zucchini in skinny strips, length-wise and beneficial laying them on paper towels to soak up the surplus moisture to maintain the lasagna from getting watery.
To assemble the lasagna, The Pioneer Lady star positioned a few of the mushroom and spinach combination within the backside of a baking pan, topped it with marinara sauce, a layer of zucchini, the cheese combination, and mozzarella cheese. Then she repeated the layers, with a last layer of spinach and mushrooms, sauce, and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese.
Drummond baked the dish in a 350 diploma Fahrenheit oven for 40 minutes, then let it sit to arrange earlier than chopping the lasagna.
The complete recipe is obtainable on the Food Network web site.