It’s been a long week. Between work, the gym, and finally taking down my Christmas decorations I’m worn out. So I figured I’d treat myself to ridiculous comfort food. This is definitely not what you eat when you’re watching carbs. Or fat. Or salt for that matter. This is what you eat when you get your one “cheat” meal a week. Which is what this is.
Anyway, today I made some pierogi lasagna. I love pierogis. I mean, what’s not to like? Pasta? Delicious. Mashed potatoes? The best! Onions and cheese? Yes, please! I really didn’t feel like going to the trouble to roll out dough and make the little pockets though. I have other tasks to get done, so that just wasn’t happening. And as you’ll see in the picture of my ingredients, I didn’t even take the time to make my own mashed potatoes. I’m sure this is a great way to use up leftover mashed potatoes, but I’m not exactly familiar with the idea of having any mashed potatoes left over! Put a bowl in front of me and I will finish them!
Pierogi lasagna
- 1 box lasagna noodles
- 2 onions
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup of whatever shredded cheese you have around (I used colby jack)
- Mashed potatoes
- Bacon (definitely optional – if you’re going to use it, just layer some cooked bacon in with the onions)
Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large pot, boil your lasagna noodles. (I’m terrible at knowing how many noodles to cook so I always just cook them all)
Meanwhile, chop up your onions. Throw the onions in a small saucepan with the butter and cook until they just start to caramelize. This is delicious when they fully caramelize too, but ain’t nobody got time for that!
Once your noodles and onions are cooked, you can start assembling the lasagna. Cover the bottom of a casserole dish with a layer of noodles. Spread half the mashed potatoes to cover the noodles.
Next, sprinkle half the cooked onions over the mashed potatoes.
Cover with 1/3 of the cheese.
Repeat for another layer. Once you have two layers done, add a third layer of noodles and cover with the remaining cheese. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 40 minutes.
While the lasagna was baking, I dealt with my leftover lasagna noodles. In a perfect world, I’d have the skills necessary to freeze lasagna noodles so perfectly that I’d be able to make another lasagna with them in the future. But I don’t. Instead, I chop up my lasagna noodles before freezing in a zip-lock bag. This way I’ll have bite-sized pieces perfect for making one of those skillet lasagnas. I could pretend that I’m not talking about hamburger helper here, but that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’ll just throw the frozen lasagna noodles into a pan with tomato sauce and heat it up. Then stir in some ricotta and call it a meal. Or maybe heat lasagna noodles with frozen spinach in a pan. Then throw in a splash of half and half and stir in ricotta.
