Probably everyone knows how to make lasagna, but as it’s one of our favorite foods we thought we’d post a recipe. Lasagna makes a healthy meal if it’s made with rice, not wheat, noodles.
The key to great lasagna is the sauce. Today we started with 80% ground beef and let the fat from the beef act as our oil.
Once it’s brown we add onions,
Shiitake mushrooms:
Spinach and sauce:
The finished sauce looks like this:
We get a long, flat pre-cooked rice noodle that looks like this:
But any rice noodle will do, it doesn’t need to make a solid layer. Asian groceries will have several varieties of rice noodle.
In a ceramic casserole dish, put a layer of sauce in the bottom, then a layer of noodles:
Add ricotta and mozzarella cheese on top of the noodles, and then start again with sauce:
When it’s ready, bake it for 40 minutes or so at 325 degrees Fahrenheit. We lost track of time and overcooked it a bit, it came out looking like this:
It still tasted great!
via this link:
This looks delicious and I am going to give it a try. I is a great dish for those extraordinarily cold and snowy winter days we are experiencing right now in Germany! My only concern with white rice is that it is virtually void of nutrients, it is basically “just starch”, just “macro-nutrients”. But then, there are not so many more options…
Please, consider posting an ice-cream receipe. We are also making home-made ice-cream with a lot of heavy cream but it still has 100 g sugar/litre which I think is still a lot (about 8-10 g per serving depending on the serving-size).
Looks delicious! I’ll have to try this out on my family. My young kids can be so picky about meat, but this may just do the trick. Given our Asian background, we aren’t too concerned about the bit of white rice we consume on a regular basis, so long as the rest of our diet is nutrient rich real foods.
Hi Iris,
I’m planning some experiments in starchy ice creams over the holidays and we’ll photograph one of them.
Best, Paul
Do you have a recipe for the ice creams?
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/02/ice-cream/
How would starchy ice cream work? tapioca possibly?
I have always been an ice cream lover. I have made ice cream from bananas and creamed coconut with small amount of water and spices (vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg) in a blender.
It has a nice creamy texture, and I think it taste great. I have also added a little bit of avacado which is also good if it´s not too much.
The only problem is that you have to wait for about an half an hour or so till it´s soft enough to eat. that wait can be a very long one:)
What a great idea!
Now I don’t have to miss the lasagna!
I had no idea they had such wide rice noodles that could be used for lasagna.
Paul, just an off-topic FYI, your book doesn’t come up when I search at Half.com, a fairly decent sized seller.
Hi D,
I’ll put that on my list to check into. These vendors are supposed to get the book listed automatically but I guess sometimes they need help.
Hi Abby,
Yes, tapioca pearls or sago pearls work well. I might even experiment with tapioca starch, we bought some recently to make Mario’s cheese balls.
Hi anna,
Sounds great! Take pictures and you can do a guest post.
Hi Mia,
The wide flat rice noodles start to fall apart after cooking if they’re pure rice. So if you buy them pre-cooked like we did, they will generally have a small amount of wheat flour in them to keep them together, so wouldn’t be suitable for gluten sensitives.
However, we’ve also made it with rice cake which has no wheat and it tastes fine, just the rice is a little thicker.
You can also use the narrow rice noodles. The lasagna doesn’t keep its layers very well on serving but the ingredients all mix together in your stomach!
Mia – Here’s a picture of rice cake slices you could use in lasagna for a pure “safe starch” recipe:
http://media.maangchi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/rice-cake-slices.jpg
Rice Tortilla strips might work well, too.
Hi Paul, do you think this spaghetti rice pasta is fine?
http://www.risoscotti.it/english/products/pastariso_spaghetti.html
I read it has rice germ but only at 2%.
Thanks
Hi Kratos,
Yes, it’s great! Rice germ is fine.
We have spaghetti, both Italian and Chinese, fairly often.
Thanks, I’m italian and I love pasta!
However I have some doubt about the safety of pasta in general, for example I know that during pastification some toxic products are produced in the Maillard reaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction
Do you know if rice pasta is frequently eaten in china?
Yes, it’s frequently eaten in China.
Thanks Paul!
I often wonder if small amount of wheat (like in those rice noodles) would be OK to consume occasionally or would it cancel out all the benefits of not consuming gluten on the regular basis? I mean, can a small amount like this or an occasional cookie cause any damage? I don’t have Celiac disease according to the results of the gastro biopsy.
Hi Mia,
For people with no known wheat sensitivity and no bowel disease, I think occasional consumption of small amounts of wheat is not likely to cause problems. “The dose makes the poison.” We would rather use pure rice, but aesthetics has value too. What would lasagna be without layers?
For people with bowel disease but not celiac disease, it’s a tougher call, because wheat can contribute to the disease even if it’s not via autoimmune reactions to gluten. If I had bowel disease, I would use the wheat-free rice cakes in my lasagna.
Rice noodles are my new favorite. I just love how I can throw them in seasoned bone broth (another new fave of mine instead of bullion), microwave up and voila! Thank you for giving me *permission* to eat them 😉
Hello! Thank you so much for your book! I absolutely love it!
Wondering…where can I find white rice lasagna noodles? I keep finding brown rice, but we are supposed to stay away from that, right? I found a couple of Asian markets here in IL, but they are so far away from me. I wondered if anyone else is having the same trouble. Thanks! BTW, I have no trouble finding rice spaghetti noddles or angel hair.
Kristin
Hi Kristin,
Larger Asian supermarkets carry long, flat rice noodles.
However, we also use boiled cabbage leaves to separate the layers and then loose spaghetti-style noodles on top.
If you don’t mind everything mixing together, instead of forming neat layers, you can do away with the cabbage leaves!
Hi there,
I wondered what you use for sauce? Just those tin/ jars or do you make your own. Sorry I am new to this. Love the book!
Bec
Hi Bec, We make our own. Homemade spaghetti/lasagna sauce is so much better!
Hi, I think sago pearls are the same thing as tapioca, but what about a tuber called sagu? I’ve had rolls made of the sagu tuber flour and they taste so good, but cannot be gotten in the US as far as I was able to find out. Is this also a safe starch? And if so, do you know where one can find the flour? Thanks!
Hi Dianne,
I think sagu is the same as sago, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroxylon_sagu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagu
It’s a safe starch.
is it ok to drink coffee?
Yes.
Is brown rice pasta okay?
Fantastic recipe, thank you very much! I hate liver (I went to a religious school…) but if I mix 50:50 chicken liver:ground beef, and add enough onions to hide the taste of the liver, and mushrooms(as in, if I don’t look too closely, I don’t know whether what I’ve picked up on my fork is mushroom or liver), I can meet my liver target for the week.