I Tried This Hack To Find Out If We've All Been Making Lasagna In the Wrong Pan This Whole Time

Every year I make lasagna for my husband for his birthday. It’s jokingly become his gift because he knows that I like making it about as much as I like organizing the sock drawer. There are so many steps and it takes so much time to assemble and bake it. Plus, when you go to slice and serve it it's often messy and hard to get a good clean cut. So when I saw a video on Instagram showing how to make a lasagna in a bundt pan so that it comes out of the pan clean and slices even more nicely—I knew I had to give it a go.

The ultimate hook in this video? That final flip onto a plate when it’s all done—it’s quite a thing to watch. The finished product is a thing of beauty: like a picture perfect savory cake. But does making lasagna this way make it taste better or even make it easier to prepare? I set out to find out.

How To Make Lasagna In a Bundt Pan

To create my version I used our recipe for World’s Best Lasagna. The good reviews had me feeling hopeful about this bundt pan endeavor. I made the sauce, I cooked the noodles and I got my ricotta mixture ready. All of the components were prepped and I felt good. Here's how I layered it in the pan:

• Spray the bundt pan with non-stick cooking spray (this is essential to make sure the lasagna comes out of the pan cleanly)
• Arrange a layer of noodles along all sides of the bundt pan by running them from the middle up the outside edge, leaving an overhang. Overlap the noodles slightly as you layer them in.
• Sprinkle in a layer of shredded mozzarella cheese, then spoon in a layer of meat sauce.
• Top the meat sauce with a single layer of noodles running horizontally (as opposed to the vertical noodles used to line the pan).
• Top the noodles with ricotta, then sprinkle on another layer of shredded mozzarella cheese. Top with another layer of noodles.
• Spoon another layer of meat sauce on top of the noodles, then fold the overhang from the first layer of noodles over the meat sauce to seal the whole thing up. Top it off with a final sprinkling of shredded mozzarella cheese.
• Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees F. Let cool for about an hour before flipping out onto a sheet pan. Then, top with more sauce and cheese and broil for 5 minutes until the cheese is melted.

Should You Be Making Lasagna In a Bundt Pan?

My bundt pan lasagna looked delicious when it came out of the oven: The mozzarella was golden brown and perfectly melted. When I flipped it out of the pan it came out smoothly with no sticking (thank you nonstick cooking spray!). But it only held it's shape for about 5 minutes before starting to expand outward.

I cut a slice and tasted it and felt underwhelmed. The lasagna was delicious, but making it in a bundt pan didn't seem to make a difference in how enjoyable it was. All I could think was, “Why did I spend so much time doing this?” because preparing it in the bundt pan was actually a lot harder than arranging the layers in a standard 9- by 13-inch casserole dish. Get that first layer of noodles arranged perfectly in a layer along the length of the bundt pan without gaps was difficult and time consuming. The non-stick surface and wet noodles made this task ridiculously challenging and I cursed my way through it. It turns out those rectangular noodles really were made for a rectangular pan.

To be honest, I don’t have any plans to make lasagna this way again. It was a hassle to assemble and all of that work didn’t do much to improve the flavor, so it seemed like a pretty big waste of time. Bottom line, I’ll stick to the baking pan version for my husband’s next birthday lasagna.