Many people love lasagna. And why not? Lasagna is not just for Italian dinner tables anymore. It is a delicious dish that makes a great meal at any time of the year, it’s not the most complicated dish to prepare, and it can be paired with anything from a fresh salad to garlic bread and a nice bottle of red wine. Even leftovers from a lasagna meal are delicious – they can be great for lunch or a quick supper the next day.
Of course, every cook or chef who prepares lasagna has a preference regarding the recipe and ingredients. For example, you might love “The World’s Best Lasagna Recipe” featured at AllRecipes.com. This recipe is meat-heavy: it’s packed with a pound of sweet Italian sausage and 3/4 pound of lean ground beef. Or, you might prefer this lasagna recipe for eight at SimplyRecipes, which is a bit lighter and includes some flavorful touches, including a half of a medium sweet white onion and a quarter of a cup of sugar.
But there’s one thing you might not have considered when it comes to lasagna – it can be a fat-filled, calorie-whopping meal. According to LiveStrong.com, a 2.5 X 4 inch portion of meat lasagna contains 321 calories, and the same size portion of lasagna with spinach has 270 calories. And let’s face it – most of us eat a bigger piece of lasagna than that – and sometimes we go back for seconds. Add it all up and that can make for a calorie-heavy meal (and that’s just from one dish on the table). SparkPeople.com offers fat and calorie content for a variety of different lasagnas and notes that 1 serving, on average, also contains about 11 grams of fat.
Now, many cooks or chefs would balk at the idea of changing any aspect of their favorite lasagna recipe, and let’s face it – sometimes you just have to enjoy a meal the way it is traditionally prepared, even if it’s only on special occasions. But if you are calorie or fat conscious and have been avoiding lasagna for that reason, we have a simple suggestion. Use part-skim or low-fat cheeses in your recipe, and yes, use spinach (or other veggie options) instead of meat. Just switching from whole milk mozzarella cheese to part-skim milk mozzarella cheese, for example, subtracts 13 calories and two grams of fat per ounce of the cheese. And believe it or not, there’s actually one gram MORE protein per ounce in part-skim milk mozzarella.
Similarly, if you substitute part-skim milk ricotta cheese for whole milk ricotta in your lasagna recipe, you are losing 10 calories and 2 grams of fat per ounce of cheese (although with ricotta, the protein content is the same). We’ve tried these lower-fat cheeses in our lasagnas and have gotten nothing but rave reviews regarding their taste.
As for spinach, you can see above that you lose more than 50 calories per serving of lasagna if you leave out the meat and add spinach instead. You can prepare fresh spinach for your recipe by stemming and rinsing it and then cooking the spinach in a skillet over medium-high heat until it is wilted. You can also defrost and use frozen spinach. In either case, the spinach should be squeezed dry before you add it to your lasagna.
AllRecipes.com offers one recipe for a Simple Spinach Lasagna here. This recipe uses frozen chopped spinach and takes advantage of the low-fat concept by incorporating both part-skim mozzarella cheese and non-fat cottage cheese.
Whether you decide to go traditional or try a lower fat recipe, the key to great lasagna is at your fingertips. Just choose your recipe and ingredients and get cooking!
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