This completely came about by accident.
I was in charge of dinner tonight, and I was going to cook Hamburger Helper.
Buuuut...
I had a better idea.
The whole entire dish was impromptu. I was just blindly sifting through the pantry, saw what we had, and just kind of made it up as I went.
Which is the process for, like, 90% of my meals.
But the REAL accident was with the sauce. What started out as my whipping up a yummy cheese sauce turned into something that I (and everyone at dinner) was definitely okay with.
Parmesan Butter!!!!
Hearty Parmesan Lasagna
Ingredients:
1-1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
1 box of lasagna pasta
1/4 cup of butter
1/2 cup of water
2 packets of Parmesan seasoning (more on that momentarily)
Garlic powder
Italian seasoning
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 tomato, thinly sliced
1/4 can of tomato sauce
Shredded cheese
Parmesan cheese
Instructions:
1.) Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2.) Begin preparing pasta over the stove. Note: I've heard a lot of controversy over whether to boil the water first, then add pasta, or put the pasta in right away. I usually put it in first and then boil the water, and it always turns out fine. But that's just me.
3.) While this is happening, layer a large skillet with a hearty amount of garlic powder and Italian seasoning. Throw in the beef and heat up the eye to a medium-high temperature.
Stir and grind up with your spatula occasionally, and season frequently depending on your desired taste. I like mine with a strong flavor, so I hit it with my seasonings usually two more times.
4.) In the meantime, begin melting butter in another pot over a medium heat. Stir very frequently. When butter is almost melted completely, add in half of the water, mix well. It will be very blotchy at first.
I recommend using a rubber spatula. It's good for scraping the sides and mixing.
5.) Add the remaining water, stir well. The mixture should come together to make a translucent yellow color.
6.) Now, about the Parmesan seasoning--a lot of the time in my house, we'll use the pasta from a box of something like macaroni and cheese or Hamburger Helper for a certain dish, but save the seasoning/cheese packets. We happened to have 2 boxes of Tuna Helper Creamy Parmesan pasta on hand, from which I took the Parmesan cheese powder.
THIS CAN EASILY BE REPLICATED WITH MOST OTHER CHEESE/SEASONING POWDERS. They could be prepackaged, homemade, whatever you have on hand.
Anyway.
Add the cheese packets to the mixture, one at a time, stirring until thoroughly combined. Let sit over the heat for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Watch it closely.
7.) Over a period of 5-8 minutes, the mixture should begin to thicken. Allow to thicken to a butter-like consistency. When you've reached this, immediately remove from heat and stir often as it cool, to keep it from cooking and further and ruining the consistency.
8.) By this time, the pasta and meat should both be close to or completely done. Add the tomatoes and onions to the meat, lower the temperature, and allow to simmer for about 5-10 more minutes. For nice, stringy onion strips, I sliced the onion whole into big, circular slices, and added them. Then, as they cooked and softened, I cut them in half with my spatula.
9.) Drain both the pasta and meat. Add the Parmesan butter to the meat mixture. Once again, I'd use the rubber spatula.
10.) Layer the bottom of a deep baking dish with a slightly thin layer of tomato sauce. Lay in one layer of lasagna noodles. Add the meat mixture, and layer the top with more noodles. Cover with various cheese to your heart's desire.
11.) Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the cheese on top is gloriously melted.
Enjoy with some buttery wheat toast.
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