Mention that you’re serving lasagna for dinner and you’ll be greeted with nothing short of excitement. When it comes to cozy and comforting crowd-pleasers, there’s not much that beats this Mediterranean dish. While we love lasagna for all its cheesy, saucy deliciousness, it’s also a great option when you need to feed a gaggle of loved ones. Oftentimes it can even be assembled the day before, making it ideal when you need to get dinner in a pinch — just pop it in the oven and bake.
Despite the belief that it’s an Italian-American dish, lasagna actually dates back to ancient Greece. This version is thought to be the first popularized version of pasta. After the Romans conquered the region, they adopted lasagna and transformed it into the dish we know and love today. Traditional lasagna combines layers of pasta sheets, red sauce, and of course, cheese, but today there are so many variations worth making.
Lasagna doesn’t have to feature tomatoes and meat sauce. For the classic lasagna lovers out there, you’ve got to try Alison Roman’s Very Good Lasagna, 50-Layer Lasagna or Samin Nosrat’s ‘The Big Lasagna.’ While lasagna isn’t known to be speedy, there’s great weeknight dinner options like Lidia Bastianich’s Skillet Lasagna, Speedy Skillet Ravioli Lasagna or our Easy Lasagna. If riffing on lasagna is more your speed, try the classic Don Angie’s Lasagna Pinwheels, Deep-Fried Lasagna Bites or Matzo Lasagna. Read on to see 41 variations of lasagna, from tradition to totally out there.
The words lasagna and easy aren’t usually in the same sentence, but trust us, this one is as low-lift as you can get. Thanks to jarred marinara and pre-shredded cheese, the only cooking involved is browning the ground beef. You don’t even have to boil the noodles — they cook in the oven as the lasagna bakes.
While Don Angie didn’t invent rotolo, pinwheel shaped pasta, the New York City-based restaurant certainly popularized it. Their version features all of the classic flavors of lasagna, which are deconstructed and formed into pinwheel-shaped portions. This recipe is a labor of love, but there’s no better option if you’re looking to impress.
This recipe from Jocelyn Delk Adams riffs on classic lasagna with a few unexpected twists. To start, make the filling by combining shredded rotisserie chicken, ricotta, spinach, spices and cream of chicken soup. The mixture is then tucked into lasagna noodles and rolled up before getting layered on a base of marinara.
While this looks like a classic lasagna, this dish has a few surprising ingredients: summer squash. Zucchini and yellow squash are grated before layered with the noodles, sauce and cheese. While you won’t be able to overly taste them, you’ll feel good knowing this hearty dish has a few extra vegetables snuck in!
Lidia Bastianich is the queen of Italian cooking. In this recipe, she opts for assembling lasagna in a skillet, which yields even more crispy noodles and a perfect dish to serve a family of four. Thanks to store-bought ingredients like marinara and pre-shredded cheese, this lasagna is a great weeknight dinner option.
For a lighter take on lasagna, we love this version that highlights some of our favorite spring flavors. In addition to the usual noodle and ricotta duo, there are layers of bechamel, spinach, peas and homemade garlicky pesto. Bonus: this satisfying lasagna happens to be vegetarian-friendly.
This dish is a mashup between a classic lasagna and pasta alla vodka, two Italian-American favorites. The sauce, which is good enough to eat on its own, gets its name from the inclusion of vodka, which is used to deglaze the pan. Drape the vodka sauce between layers of noodles and cheese before baking.
We can’t imagine anything better than lasagna on demand. To make that dream a reality, you’ll roll up parboiled noodles with saucy beef and ricotta before tucking them into a casserole dish. Once the rollups have cooled, they can be easily frozen and baked with additional marinara whenever your next hankering for lasagna strikes.
Lasagna doesn’t have to be an all-day affair. This recipe gets dinner on the table in under 30 minutes, thanks to the use of store-bought ravioli, which serves as the base of the lasagna. You don’t even have to boil the ravioli — simply add them straight to the sauce along with cheese and bake until bubbling.
There’s no question that the best part of lasagna is the layer of crispy edges on top. The surface area of the sheet pan delivers just that. Because there’s no tedious layering required, this lasagna comes together quickly.
This recipe debunks the idea that lasagna has to be layered. Instead, all of the ingredients — crushed tomatoes, harissa, spinach, cheese and broken noodles — are stirred together in a casserole dish before baked.
Alison Roman swears by baking lasagna not once, but twice in order to achieve the ideal ratio of melty cheese and crispy edges. The sauce can be made up to one week in advance and the lasagna can be assembled up to three days in advance, making this a great option when you want to get ahead of prepping for a crowd.
This recipe bucks tradition by adding ham and fontina to the mix, and we couldn’t be happier about it. The bechamel can be made in advance and the cheese shredded before, making assembly here a breeze. Pro tip: freeze leftover ham from holiday dinners to save for this lasagna.
If you’re a fan of the classic combination of butternut squash ravioli with sage butter, you’ll love this lasagna. The butternut squash is cooked until tender with milk, ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan, then blended into a silky sauce. To make this dish, fill each lasagna noodle with the sauce, roll them up and tuck into a casserole dish to bake.
This recipe takes inspiration from the TikTok craze of air frying pasta to make “chips.” Here, lasagna noodles are broken up and dressed in Parmesan and Italian seasoning before getting fried until crispy. To assemble, top the chips with meat sauce, sautéed vegetables and, of course, cheese.
If you’re looking for a great gluten-free lasagna recipe, this is it. Swap the usual noodles for thinly sliced sweet potatoes, which add structure as well as flavor to this dish. The sweet potatoes are layered with marinara and cooked ground beef (or turkey) for an ultra-comforting bite.
Samin Nosrat never misses with her recipes, and her lasagna recipe is no different. We won’t lie — this dish is a true labor of love involving making all homemade elements, including the pasta sheets. To make this more manageable, make all the components ahead of time to make assembly low-stress.
On cold winter nights, there’s nothing more comforting than a bowl of short ribs. Knowing this, Giada took two favorite comfort foods and combined them for this short rib-rich lasagna. It’s saucy, meaty, cheesy and impossibly delicious.
With four cheeses, a creamy white sauce and roasted wild mushrooms, this vegetarian lasagna is pure decadence. To really lean into the mushroom flavor, use an assortment of mushrooms such as oyster, shiitake and cremini, which add great texture to the dish.
This lasagna is a marriage between Italian and French classic dishes. Ratatouille — a vegetable mixture made with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini and onions — gets layered between sheets of lasagna. In between, noodles are draped with a homemade bechamel, which adds a creaminess to every bite.
This low-lift vegetarian lasagna comes together quickly, thanks to store-bought marinara sauce and no-boil lasagna sheets. Spinach and mushrooms are sautéed before getting combined with ricotta. The layers here alternate between the ricotta mixture and red sauce.
Joy Bauer’s lasagna recipe calls for nestling the lasagna noodles in enough sauce to cook through while the lasagna is in the oven. For a healthy riff on the classic Italian dish, layer saucy ground turkey and spinach-ricotta to create the luscious layers here.
Amaretti cookies are often thought of as a sweet treat, but Giada adds a few to cooked butternut squash for a touch of sweetness. Lasagna noodles are layered with the squash mixture and bechamel before getting baked. This recipe can be made a full day ahead of time, which is a great option for hosting.
This holiday showstopper is sure to go down in history. Homemade pasta sheets, fresh tomato sauce and five types of cheese make up this lasagna. Since it’s a real project to assemble, start the day ahead of serving and let it rest in the refrigerator before baking.
Skip the mess with this low-stress lasagna. Made in one pan, this dish delivers all the flavors of a classic lasagna with little effort. For some much welcome nutrients, Giada sneaks in broccoli rabe to this dish, but you can swap it with regular broccoli in a pinch.
If you’re unfamiliar, lasagna soup has all the trappings of the baked casserole, but in soup form. Broken lasagna noodles cook directly in the meaty tomato sauce. Don’t skip the ricotta dumplings, which are dolloped on top of the soup, adding the familiar creaminess of lasagna to the dish.
This lasagna recipe employs both a bechamel and two types of cheese to attain optimum creamy, cheesy goodness. You’ll also find alternating layers of marinara and sautéed mushrooms in this vegetarian dish.
Eggplant Parmesan meets lasagna in this Italian-inspired mashup. Instead of noodles, thin layers of eggplant and zucchini are breaded and fried to create distinguished layers. What makes this dish more akin to lasagna is the bechamel that gets draped over the vegetables — along with ample cheese.
This lasagna layers crispy eggplant slices between the noodles to bulk out the dish. Along with meat sauce, ricotta and mozzarella, the baked eggplant slices are layered on top of each other to create a hearty lasagna. This dish can easily be made vegetarian by swapping the meat sauce for marinara.
As much as we love lasagna, it’s not exactly tailgate-friendly food. In order to get all the flavor of lasagna without the mess, we love deep frying bite-size portions. The result is a perfect pop of cheesy, meaty goodness that you can bring on-the-go.
There are endless ways to use up matzo. Here, Melissa Clark swaps pasta sheets for matzo to make up her Passover-friendly lasagna. To cut down on prep time, assemble the lasagna the day before serving and just add a few minutes to the bake time.
Adam Richman’s lasagna is a combination of two of his favorite recipes — his mom’s spinach pie and his lasagna. The lasagna recipe is fairly standard, combining noodles with marinara, sausage and cheese. Before baking, add slices of spinach pie to the top of the lasagna, which adds an extra cheesy layer and pop of green to every bite.
This two-in-one recipe combines two beloved dishes into a real crowd-pleaser. First, thinly pounded chicken breast gets breaded and fried until golden brown. Then, proceed with making lasagna as usual, except that you’ll layer those chicken pieces with marinara sauce, cheese and noodles.
For a protein-packed lasagna loaded with vegetables, look no further. The slow-cooker does the heavy lifting here, so all you need to do is assemble. Layer homemade tomato sauce, noodles, spinach, cheese and mushrooms together and let the slow cooker do its thing for a few hours.
Campfire cooking can be so much more than hot dogs and hamburgers. Here, get all the flavors of lasagna in a skillet. By cooking this over a campfire, you’ll get an extra smoky flavor throughout — but you can also make it on the stove.
Lasagna rolls deliver all the flavor of lasagna in easy-to-eat portions. This vegetarian version calls for zucchini and yellow squash, which are added to the ricotta filling mixture. Spread it over the noodles and roll up before arranging them over a bed of marinara sauce to bake.
Making lasagna in a slow-cooker is the ultimate hack. That said, cooking pasta in a slow-cooker can be challenging — it’s easy to dry out the pasta or overcook it until mushy. The trick here is to start with regular, uncooked noodles and cook the lasagna on low until they’re perfectly tender.
Sure, you could reheat leftover lasagna in the microwave, but why not transform it into a whole new dish? Here, leftover lasagna is added to cooked with mirepoix, crushed tomatoes and water before getting blended until smooth. You can do this with any vegetarian lasagna, but we’re partial to using Nealy Fisher’s no-noodle vegetable lasagna.
Most vegetable-forward lasagnas incorporate the ingredients in distinct layers throughout. Al Roker opts for sneaking the vegetables into the sauce, which is perfect if you’re feeding picky eaters. Zucchini, yellow squash and bell peppers are all added in, but you could experiment with any vegetables you love.
It may not be the prettiest dish, but this easy-to-make lasagna oozes comfort. In addition to the usual noodles and marinara, this recipe calls for using vegetables like spinach, peppers and mushrooms to fill out the lasagna.
This mammoth lasagna alternates layers of homemade tomato sauce and bolognese between pasta noodles. While you could use any bolognese recipe, we’re partial to the one from Chef Anthony Scott. Fennel is added to the mirepoix while ground beef and chicken are used for the sauce, giving the bolognese a deeper depth of flavor.