Ina Garten's Tip For Turkey Lasagna Fixes A Classic Mistake
People love traditional Italian fare but, in an effort to make it leaner, substitute ground beef or pork with ground turkey. Unfortunately, working with ground turkey can often be difficult. Ground turkey contains more moisture than ground beef or pork, giving it a wet consistency. It can also get mushy and grainy when cooked and, being leaner, has less flavor. That certainly isn't what you're looking for when you're making turkey lasagna. Thankfully, Ina Garten has a hack for getting a lot more flavor into her version of the dish, which appears in her book "Barefoot Contessa Family Style" and on the Food Network. Her secret? Sweet Italian turkey sausage.
Using sweet Italian sausage not only allows Garten to add flavor to her lasagna, it also keeps it lean. A single link of sweet Italian turkey sausage contains approximately 9 grams of fat and 2.5 grams of saturated fat versus the 21 grams of fat and 8 grams of saturated fat you'd find in one sweet Italian pork sausage link. Although Garten removes the turkey from its casing before sauteing it with garlic and onions, the turkey holds its texture.
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Ina Garten first cooks her onions and garlic, then browns the turkey. Then, she builds the sauce by adding tomatoes, tomato paste, fresh basil and parsley, and salt and pepper to the pan. Garten's turkey lasagna and her roasted vegetable lasagna both veer from classic recipes in a few other ways. For instance, Garten's recipe suggests blending goat cheese in with the more customary cheeses for an American lasagna, parmesan and ricotta. While you don't need to do this for this recipe, Garten often makes her own ricotta cheese. Garten also sends some shivers up the spine of lasagna traditionalists by soaking lasagna noodles in a large bowl of hot water for 20 to 30 minutes instead of pre-boiling them and slicing her mozzarella cheese instead of shredding it.
Even with the goat cheese and turkey, the recipe doesn't break Garten's rule for no more than three prominent flavors per dish. It's a great dish to prepare ahead of time, too. It may not be the lasagna your grandmother put on the Sunday dinner table, but judging by positive reviews from people who've made Garten's version, it's still delicious. For more from the Barefoot Contessa, check out these cooking tips from Ina Garten.
Read the original article on Chowhound.
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