Creamy Vegetable Lasagna Recipe

I make this Vegetable Lasagna with broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots, then layer everything with ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan, and homemade white sauce. There is no meat or tomato sauce in this one, but you will not miss either. It is creamy, cheesy, and filling enough to serve as the main dish.

The vegetables need a little time in the skillet before you start layering. I cook the mushrooms first because they release the most water, then add the carrots and broccoli. Let that extra liquid cook off in the pan. This keeps the lasagna from turning watery and helps every slice hold together when it comes out of the baking dish.

Cook the lasagna noodles about 2 minutes less than the package instructions. They will continue cooking in the oven, so taking them out early keeps them from getting too soft. Drain the noodles and lay them flat while you prepare the sauce and filling. They will be much easier to handle once it is time to assemble the lasagna.

What is Vegetable Lasagna?

Vegetable Lasagna is a baked pasta dish built from layers of flat noodles, vegetables, cheese, and sauce, cut into squares and served straight from the pan. The classic Italian version layers pasta sheets with ragu and bechamel.

The same layered format also works with vegetables in place of meat. This version keeps the bechamel and uses broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots. Three cheeses go in with them: ricotta between the layers, mozzarella through the middle, and Parmesan across the top. Leaving out the tomato entirely puts it closer to a lasagne bianche than to my homemade lasagna with red sauce.

Lasagna often shows up in Filipino kitchens for special occasions. It takes a pan, an oven, and enough of everything to feed a table, so it tends to appear at family gatherings. A vegetable version does that same job for anyone who is skipping meat, without feeling like a separate meal.

Ingredients for Vegetable Lasagna

Vegetable filling

• White mushrooms – One 8 ounce package, sliced, which gives you about 3 cups. Slice them yourself if you can. Pre-sliced mushrooms dry out at the edges.
• Broccoli – Chop the florets small, about thumbnail size. Large ones sit too tall and push the noodle layer up.
• Carrots – Small cubes, matching your broccoli pieces, so everything finishes in the same skillet time.
• Yellow onion – One medium, chopped.
• Garlic – Three cloves, minced. It goes in during the last minute so it does not burn.
• Italian seasoning – One teaspoon. I use it here rather than measuring basil and oregano separately.
• Olive oil, salt, ground black pepper

White sauce

• Butter and all purpose flour – Four tablespoons of butter to half a cup of flour. That is more flour than most white sauces use.
• Whole milk – Four cups. I stay with whole milk. Lower fat milk gives me a thinner sauce after 45 minutes in the oven.
• Ground nutmeg – An eighth of a teaspoon. It is the one ingredient people leave out, and I never do.

Ricotta filling

• Whole milk ricotta – A full 15 ounce container. Part skim ricotta goes grainy in a long bake. No ricotta on hand? See the substitutions below.
• Egg – One large, beaten into the ricotta so the middle layers keep their shape when you slice.
• Grated Parmesan – One cup total. Half goes into the ricotta, half goes on top.

To assemble

• Lasagna noodles – Twelve pieces give you four layers of three in a 9 by 13 pan. Boil a couple of spares, since one usually tears.
• Shredded mozzarella – Two and a half cups, grated from a block. Pre shredded cheese is coated to stop it clumping, and that coating makes it melt stiff.

A closer look at the white sauce

The white sauce has to be thick enough to hold the layers together. It is a bechamel: butter and flour cooked into a roux, then milk whisked in until it thickens. In a meat lasagna, the tomato sauce keeps everything moist. There is no tomato here, so the bechamel does that on its own. That is why I use a full half cup of flour. A thinner sauce tastes fine and still slides out the side of every slice.

You can use jarred alfredo instead. It works, and it tastes like jarred alfredo, which runs sweeter and saltier than what you make yourself. The homemade version is ten minutes of whisking, so I would make it.

Prepare the noodles, vegetables, white sauce, and ricotta before you start layering.

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the lasagna noodles.
2. Cook them about 2 minutes less than the package says, then drain and lay them flat in a single layer on a tray or clean kitchen towel.

Slightly firmer than al dente is what you want. They spend another 45 minutes in the oven soaking up sauce.

1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat, add the mushrooms alone, and cook 5 to 7 minutes until their liquid releases and cooks away.
2. Add the onion and carrots and saute for 4 minutes.
3. Add the broccoli and cook 3 minutes more.
4. Stir in the garlic, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper, cook 1 minute, then take the skillet off the heat.

Wait for the pan to look dry before the onion and carrots go in. Liquid still pooling around the mushrooms ends up between your noodles later.

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, add the flour, and whisk until smooth.
2. Cook 1 minute while whisking, keeping the heat moderate so it stays pale.
3. Pour in the milk gradually while whisking, bring it to a gentle simmer, and cook 5 to 7 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon.
4. Stir in the salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then take the pan off the heat.

Add the milk in stages rather than all at once. A bechamel goes lumpy when cold milk floods hot flour. If lumps do appear, a stick blender clears them in seconds.

1. Combine the ricotta, egg, half a cup of Parmesan, and black pepper in a bowl.
2. Mix until it is well blended and set it aside.

The egg is what lets you cut clean squares. Without it, the ricotta layer collapses when you lift one out.

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spread half a cup of white sauce across the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch baking dish and arrange 3 noodles over it.
2. Spread one third of the ricotta over the noodles, add one third of the vegetables, then 3/4 cup of white sauce and half a cup of mozzarella.
3. Repeat that sequence two more times, using 3 noodles each round.
4. Lay the last 3 noodles on top, pour all the remaining white sauce over them, and finish with the last cup of mozzarella and the remaining Parmesan.

Check that the top noodles are covered corner to corner before the cheese goes on. The edges are where bare pasta shows up.

1. Cover the dish loosely with foil, keeping it off the cheese, and set it on a sheet pan.
2. Bake 30 minutes.
3. Remove the foil and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until the sauce bubbles around the edges and the cheese browns lightly.
4. Let it rest 15 minutes before slicing.

Do not skip the rest. A lasagna cut straight from the oven slides apart on the spatula.

What to Serve with Vegetable Lasagna

• Garlic Bread – The one I reach for first, since the crust is good for the white sauce left on the plate
• Caesar Salad – The lemon in the dressing cuts through three cheeses
• Grilled asparagus – A green side that is quick and easy to make. Season with salt, pepper, and add some garlic and drizzle with olive oil. Grill to perfection.
• Simple green salad – Lettuce, tomato, and a sharp vinaigrette, to keep the plate from being all cheese
• Iced tea with lemon – Something acidic to drink with a rich lasagna

Storage

This Vegetable Lasagna keeps well, and I think it slices better on day two than it does the night you make it. Let the pan cool completely before it goes anywhere.

• Refrigerator: Cover the dish or move slices to an airtight container for up to 4 days. The layers firm up overnight and cut cleanly straight from the fridge.
• Freezer: Wrap individual slices and freeze for up to 2 months. I prefer doing this by the slice because a full frozen lasagna takes hours to heat evenly.
• Reheating: Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then reheat covered at 350°F for 20 to 25 minutes. Spoon a little milk over the slice before it goes in and the top layer stays soft.

More Pasta Recipes

• Truffle Mushroom Pasta – For when the mushrooms are the part you came for
• Vegetable Stir Fry Pasta – The same vegetables in a weeknight version with no oven involved
• Spinach and Feta Pasta – A lighter meatless pasta that comes together without baking
• Cheesy Baked Macaroni Pinoy Style – A Filipino baked pasta made with a sweet-style meat sauce
• Christmas Lasagna – The holiday version I make when the group is bigger
• Broken Lasagna – All the same flavors in a skillet, for nights when the oven stays off
• No Bake Filipino Style Lasagna – Made in a turbo broiler, for kitchens without a full oven

• Ricotta cheese – Small curd cottage cheese swaps in one for one at the same 15 ounces. Drain it in a sieve for a few minutes first so the extra whey does not thin your layers.
• Broccoli – Cauliflower works at the same 2 cups. Zucchini also works, sliced into thin half moons, but give it an extra minute in the skillet.
• Fresh vegetables – Frozen is fine. Thaw them and press them dry in a clean towel first, then saute the same way. Frozen broccoli in particular carries a lot of ice.
• Regular lasagna noodles – No boil noodles work here if you add an extra half cup of milk to the sauce, so there is enough liquid for them to soften in the pan.
• Adding meat – Half a pound of browned ground beef or Italian sausage folded into the vegetables turns this into a white sauce meat lasagna. The same filling also works rolled instead of layered, the way I do my lasagna roll ups.
• Spinach – Ten ounces of thawed frozen spinach, squeezed dry, can go into the ricotta instead of the skillet. That takes it toward my spinach lasagne.

Cut it into 8 squares and serve it warm, with the white sauce still loose enough to run a little on the plate. One pan of Vegetable Lasagna feeds eight, which makes it worth the oven time when I need to feed a group. The corner squares with the browned cheese are always the ones that go first. Share and enjoy!