6 Pounds, 3 Nights of Lasagna
During one of our now-many stock-up-on-food shopping trips we bought a frozen lasagna at Costco. The package didn't look so big at first, but read the label: it is 6 pounds (2.72 kg) of frozen food!
One idea for how to use six pounds of food is to invite a bunch of friends over. That's kind of off the table now due to Coronavirus (social distancing - flatten the curve!) so we went with Plan B: Cook the lasagna one night and be ready to eat leftovers for a few days afterwards.
Friday night we decided to kill the fatted calf... er, bake the frozen monstrosity.
It doesn't look terribly appetizing in frozen form (above). Sadly it doesn't look terribly much better when baked (below).
BTW this epic six-pounder took over 2 hours to bake from frozen. The instructions said to bake it between 1 hour 55 minutes and 2 hours 5 minutes, then let it sit for 12 minutes. Twelve, not 10 or 15, not 11 or 13.
I always take packaged cook times as guidelines (which is all they're meant to be) and used a food thermometer starting at 1:45 to gauge when it had reached proper temperature internally. Ours wound up needing a bake time of 2:15. Then I let it settle for 10. I know, that's under spec, but that point Hawk and I were getting impatient. 😏😉😋
How'd it taste? Well... not as good a fresh lasagna but pretty good for packaged frozen food. One challenge was that it was goopy inside, so serving it was a bit messy. (We used a large spoon.) Maybe we should have let it sit those two extra minutes.
So, that was Friday night. We knew when we cooked it we were signing up to three dinners of lasagna. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. How did it taste on the second night and the third?
The picture above is my Night 2 dinner, with the first batch of lasagna leftovers.
One cool thing about lasagna, and this was part of my willingness to buy a large package, is that if it's good to start it keeps and reheats really well. This lasanga followed that rule. I reheated leftovers in the microwave at half power for 3-4 minutes, adding a bit of water to the heating dish (to rehydrate sauces as they dry out in the 'fridge), and served with fresh vegetables, bread with garlic sauce, and of course the leftover half bottle of wine.
Sunday Hawk pulled double duty, eating a bit of the lasagna for lunch and then joining me again to polish it off for dinner. Six pounds, three nights. Done.
One idea for how to use six pounds of food is to invite a bunch of friends over. That's kind of off the table now due to Coronavirus (social distancing - flatten the curve!) so we went with Plan B: Cook the lasagna one night and be ready to eat leftovers for a few days afterwards.
Friday night we decided to kill the fatted calf... er, bake the frozen monstrosity.
It doesn't look terribly appetizing in frozen form (above). Sadly it doesn't look terribly much better when baked (below).
BTW this epic six-pounder took over 2 hours to bake from frozen. The instructions said to bake it between 1 hour 55 minutes and 2 hours 5 minutes, then let it sit for 12 minutes. Twelve, not 10 or 15, not 11 or 13.
I always take packaged cook times as guidelines (which is all they're meant to be) and used a food thermometer starting at 1:45 to gauge when it had reached proper temperature internally. Ours wound up needing a bake time of 2:15. Then I let it settle for 10. I know, that's under spec, but that point Hawk and I were getting impatient. 😏😉😋
How'd it taste? Well... not as good a fresh lasagna but pretty good for packaged frozen food. One challenge was that it was goopy inside, so serving it was a bit messy. (We used a large spoon.) Maybe we should have let it sit those two extra minutes.
So, that was Friday night. We knew when we cooked it we were signing up to three dinners of lasagna. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. How did it taste on the second night and the third?
The picture above is my Night 2 dinner, with the first batch of lasagna leftovers.
One cool thing about lasagna, and this was part of my willingness to buy a large package, is that if it's good to start it keeps and reheats really well. This lasanga followed that rule. I reheated leftovers in the microwave at half power for 3-4 minutes, adding a bit of water to the heating dish (to rehydrate sauces as they dry out in the 'fridge), and served with fresh vegetables, bread with garlic sauce, and of course the leftover half bottle of wine.
Sunday Hawk pulled double duty, eating a bit of the lasagna for lunch and then joining me again to polish it off for dinner. Six pounds, three nights. Done.