Ina Garten's Genius Trick for the Easiest Way to Make Lasagna

We've all been there; the need for lasagna is real, but the commitment to spending hours cooking is not. In a fit of laziness and a serious cheesy pasta craving, I started Googling...Is it really necessary to pre-boil your lasagne sheets? When dealing with classic dried lasagna noodles, I’ve always been told you absolutely have to boil them. But this is easily the most tedious step of lasagna making and is often what puts me off from making it altogether. Sure, you could use no-boil noodles, but then you’d have to greatly increase the liquid in your recipe and often nearly double the cooking time– another time suck I am just too impatient for. While switching between tabs of Google searches for “lazy lasagna” and “is boiling lasagna noodles necessary?” (and the UberEats app), I came across a hack from the one and only Ina Garten.

Skip Boiling and Soak Noodles Instead to Make Lasagna Prep Quick and Easy

Her genius hack is to briefly soak your regular lasagna sheets in hot water. This softens them slightly, completely omitting the need to boil. This is so smart because if you put uncooked lasagna noodles into your lasagna, the dry pasta will suck up literally every ounce of moisture and leave you with a super dry and pasty casserole-type dish, probably with still undercooked pasta. We boil the lasagna sheets first to keep this from happening, but even still, the pasta will continue to soak up at least some liquid in the oven, which can yield a soggy pasta layer, and nobody wants that. 

As mentioned before, no-boil sheets don’t require pre-cooking, but since they are still a form of dried pasta, they need lots of liquid to avoid drying out. If your recipe isn’t meant for no-boil pasta, you can risk some serious issues by trying to find the right amount of excess liquid to add. No-boil sheets don’t suck up as much water as regular dried lasagna noodles would since they’re par-cooked, but they still need significantly more liquid and time. If I’m making lasagna, I don’t also want to do math and potentially wait an extra hour for my dinner to be ready, so no-boil sheets are out for me.

This hack is the best of both worlds; you get the ease and convenience of no-boil sheets but the streamlined cook time and texture of perfectly cooked lasagna. I’ve heard you can try soaking with no-boil noodles as well, but I haven’t tested it myself, so I’m not sure about the cooking time.

How to Soak Lasagna Noodles

To perfectly execute this trick, fill a glass baking dish with the hottest water you can get out of your tap. Place your dry noodles in the water, making sure they’re all equally submerged, and let them soak for about 20 minutes. Let this go while making your sauce or preheating the oven, and it shaves off all the extra time you’d spend boiling them. Drain the noodles (don’t rinse!) and assemble the lasagna like you normally would. Bake at 400 degrees F for just 30 minutes, and voila—homemade lasagna suitable for a weeknight.

I was astounded at how easy and delicious this lasagna was. No overcooked, starchy, mushy noodles and no mess from boiling, just perfect lasagna quickly. Depending on whether you use homemade or store-bought sauce and the other ingredients you choose to add, you could have a hot, gooey, cheesy lasagna on the table in under an hour. Thanks, Ina!