Comfort Food is King {Barilla Lasagne}

When it comes to cold weather months, days when daylight hours are getting short, times when to-do lists are longer than the hours we have … when you just need a break, we turn to comfort food.

I craved comfort food particularly after Hurricane Sandy. And then to combat the “comfort food diet,” I turned to plates and plates of roasted vegetables and fresh fruit.

There is something about Italian food, paticularly pasta, that always, without fail, screams comfort. It just wraps you up in a big warm blanket.

Of marinara sauce.

And ricotta.

And pasta. Oh pasta.

Especially lasagna. Or as Barilla spells it, lasagne.

It doesn’t get more comfort food than that, does it?

I usually keep a box of their oven-ready noodles on hand, for those weeknights when I don’t have the time to make a full-blown, from scratch, lasagna dish, but when the comfort food cravings are just too loud to bear.

With these noodles and a jar of sauce on hand, lasagna during the week becomes a possibility. A reality.

And the kids? As long as I include garlic bread, they can’t get enough of it. Using this recipe, you can be eating lasagna in an hour. No joke.

Hungry for more comfort food inspiration?
Barilla is having a #gno Twitter party on Wednesday, December 19 from 9-10 pm EST. Follow hashtag #BarillaLasagne to join in.
More Barilla lasagne recipes, including several with vegetables!, can be found here.
You can also follow Barilla on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest for more pasta inspiration.

Barilla Oven-Ready Lasagne

Ingredients
1 box Barilla Oven-Ready Lasagne
1 jar Barilla Marinara Sauce
1 quart milk
7 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons flour
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
1 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese grated and divided
1 pound ground beef

Directions
PRE-HEAT oven to 400°F. HEAT milk in a medium sized pot. At the same time, in another similar sized pot, MELT the butter and whisk in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes. Slowly WHISK the warm milk into the roux, bring to a simmer and season with salt and pepper. REMOVE from heat and stir in 3/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Meanwhile, COOK the beef until slightly brown, add the marinara sauce and 1/2 jar of water, season with salt and black pepper and simmer until it is reduced in a large nonstick skillet. SPRAY a 13 x 9 inch glass baking pan with cooking spray. On the bottom of the pan, PLACE 1/6 of the béchamel sauce and cover with 3 sheets of no-boil lasagne. TOP with 1/6 of the béchamel and 1/5 of the meat sauce and continue alternating with the lasagne sheets for 4 more layers. The final layer should be béchamel topped with sauce and the remaining 1/4 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. BAKE for 20 minutes covered with foil, then uncovered for five more minutes or until the corners are brown and bubbling.