I love lasagna since it makes a great one dish meal for the whole family and there are so many different ingredients you can use to change things up.
This is a different kind of lasagna – it's a mushroom and chicken lasagna layered with a delicious homemade tomato sauce with fresh basil, ricotta and mozzarella cheese!
I typically make my lasagna using ground beef but since there was some ground chicken on sale I thought this would be a great opportunity to try making it a little different. Using lean ground chicken for the recipe makes it a little lighter and the flavour is so fantastic!
I made the tomato sauce using a large can of diced tomatoes and some tomato paste, onions, mushrooms and a lovely blend of fragrant Italian herbs and spices. Oh and garlic, I love garlic so I made certain there was some added! I tend to like a lot of garlic but feel free to add more or less depending on your liking.
A lasagna just isn't a lasagna without lots of cheese!
On top of the lasagna sheets I spread a thin layer of light ricotta cheese and then sprinkled with some mozzarella. If you can get your hands on a stretchy version of mozzarella cheese use it in this recipe! It's amazing with stretchy cheese!
Mushroom and chicken lasagna is a great dish for having leftovers. I like to make a large dish of this so we can have an easy meal the next day but most of the time there are no leftovers! 🙂
Mushroom and Chicken Lasagna
- Yield: 6-8 Servings 1x
Ingredients
- Box of oven ready lasagna sheets
- 2 cups chopped onion
- 3–4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 4 cups sliced mushroom
- 1/4 cup fresh basil, torn or cut up
- 1 1/2 tsp Italian herb seasoning
- 1/8 tsp ground sage
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- pinch of salt
- 2 lbs lean ground chicken
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 tsp dried sage (this one is different from the ground kind – it's more “leafy”)
- 2 cups ricotta cheese
- 12 oz tomato paste
- 26 oz can of diced tomatoes
- 3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
Instructions
- In a large skillet cook the ground chicken until no longer pink.
- Drain any excess fat from the pan.
- Add the onions and mushrooms and cook on medium until onions are softened.
- Add the 1/4 cup of water.
- Lower the heat and add the pepper, salt, both kinds of sage, bay leaves, and Italian seasoning. Stir everything so that the herbs are mixed in well.
- Stir in the tomato paste making sure it's coating the contents of the skillet.
- Add the minced garlic, fresh basil and diced tomatoes. Combine well and return heat to medium and let the contents of the skillet bubble up a little while constantly stirring.
- Turn down the heat and let simmer covered for about 10 minutes.
- Turn off the heat on the burner and give the meat sauce a stir.
- Remove the bay leaves from the skillet and discard.
- Pre-heat the oven to 400°F
- Into a 9″ x 12″ glass baking dish put a little of the sauce in the bottom so it's lightly covered.
- Over the sauce, place 4 oven ready lasagna sheets side by side evenly into the dish.
- Using a spoon, spread about 1/2 of the ricotta cheese over the lasagna sheets.
- Over this, sprinkle some of the mozzarella cheese.
- Next, pour some of your sauce over top and spread it around so it's even.
- Then layer lasagna sheets, ricotta, mozzarella then sauce again in that order.
- Add a final layer of lasagna sheets over the sauce.
- Pour the remaining sauce over the lasagna sheets and spread it around so that it's even.
- Over this sprinkle the remaining mozzarella cheese.
- Cover the baking dish with a lid or aluminum foil. Make sure that you “tent” it up a little so that the cheese doesn't stick to the foil. Try to make sure you make a good seal with the foil around the edges of the dish so that moisture doesn't escape while baking.
- Place into the oven and bake for 1 hour. Remove the aluminum foil cover in the last 15 minutes of baking.
- The dish will very very hot once done. Let it stand for about 5 minutes or so before serving so that it settles a bit and stops bubbling.
