I bought a pound of hot Italian sausage that was on sale, and I’m thinking of using it in lasagna. I’ve never used the hot version in lasagna before, so I’m hesitant to switch up my recipe after all these years.
For those of you who use sausage in lasagna, do you use the mild or hot version? Does it make much difference? Am I too set in my ways, and overthinking this?
I’ll be interested to see the replies you get. It’s never occured to me to put sausage in lasagne and I can’t recall ever seeing a recipe including it (although that may be because I’ve missed it)
Well, yeah – I was thinking the same thing – I use ground beef . . . sometimes ground pork, but not sausage per se.
On the other hand, when using sausage in the making of a tomato sauce for a simple pasta dish, I tend to make little “meatballs” of Italian sausage. I will use both hot and mild, but keep them separate – that say, each bite of sausage in the sauce is a little surprise.
Interesting… I’ve always used ground mild Italian sausage in my lasagna. Maybe it’s a regional thing. I grew up in the Boston area.
I use Bolognese with my fave being 2/3 beef and 1/3 pork (ground).
You’re overthinking it. Use whatever sounds good!
Definitely overthinking. Use it - it will be delicious!
Ok, I’ll use the hot sausage for the lasagna. I’m making it on Thursday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Hopefully there will be leftovers to get us through the snowstorm on Friday!
if you’re not entirely sure, try leaving it out of half. If you’re using other meat(s), that is.
I use half hot and half mild Italian sausage in mine.
Been using sausage in my lasagne for years.
I use half sweet and half hot. Not only do I like both but it adds some adventure to the meal. You never know which is going to hit the tongue, sometimes it is sweet and sometime hot (unless your hot is much redder than the sweet).
As an aside, I do not think that sweet sausage freezes as well as hot, it seems to lose the flavor more than hot.
If you want something truly special in a lasagne try Hazan’s Bolognese (I think referenced above). Make you own pasta and Bolognese and you will never taste a better lasagne. And it freezes well.
I’ve noticed the two different spellings of lasagna in this thread, so I googled it to see if I had been misspelling it all these years, but apparently both spellings are correct, depending are where you’re from. I pulled this from The Grammarist:
Lasagna vs. lasagne
For the flat, wide pasta and the dish made from such pasta, North American English speakers use lasagna. English speakers from outside North America usually use lasagne.
The word comes from Italian, of course. In that language, lasagna is the singular noun and lasagne is the plural, but this does not carry over into the words’ treatment in English. Both the plural and the singular forms are usually treated as mass nouns, taking singular verbs.
The word first appeared in English in the 19th century, but the dish did not become popular in English-speaking countries (the U.S. first, then elsewhere) until the second half of the 20th century. Both forms have had nearly identical trajectories, in terms of when they appeared and when they grew more common, on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
I grew up in the Boston area too, Nate, but have never seen sausage of any kind in lasagne. My ancestry is Italian, lived (and still do) from Rome to Bari.
So true, jfood! Once I started making it, I don’t make any other kind and don’t eat it in restaurants either. I still remember lo those many years ago when you ‘held my hand’ when I made your wonder ravioli. Good memories.
Yeah – we like layers of wilted spinach and mushrooms next to the romano-spiked ricotta layers.
I use hot sausage in anything that I make with sausage. Mild or “sweet” sausage does not exist to me.
(*Excluding breakfast sausage, I’m just speaking “Italian” sausages)
Sure you can use it. Try something new. I often use it with some ground beef in sauces.
I remove it from the casing and pinch off pieces. If you cook it in your sauce, raw, you may need to skim off the fat later.
It’s really not that hot when cooked with all the other ingredients.
Now I want lasagna……
We now have grandchildren and I’m forcing myself to accommodate them re spiciness. But hopefully that’s temporary.
That’s good. I’m an English speaker from outside North America.
My recollection of trips to Italy is that menus there also use “lasagne” but I’m happy to be corrected on my recollection.
In Italy, lasagna is not a dish, but a wide rectangular noodle. Unless you were ordering just one wide rectangular noodle, you would need to order the plural – lasagne. And that is what menus say.
Also, finding lasagne on a menu in Italy does not always mean you will get layered noodles that have been baked with stuff in between. There are some regions of Italy where lasagne are boiled alone in salted water and tossed like any other pasta into a loose sauce, and only seldom a meat sauce.
Some of the very oldest names for noodles in Europe resemble the word lasagna or lagane, in languages not just confined to Italian. It is possible that all fresh handmade noodles – at least in Italy – were originally wide rectangular lasagne, and only later began to be cut to ribbons-- which the meaning of tagliatelle (the classic noodle to pair with a Bolognese meat sauce). The Italian verb “to cut” is tagliere, and in other regions of Italy, the cut lasagne are called taglioni, taglierini, tajarin… and maltagliati are “bad” cut or ripped lasagne.
