crockpot lasagne recipe

We have picky eaters at our house. I know, I know, it’s probably all my fault, but after multiple vomiting episodes at the dinner table I stopped forcing people to try one bite of everything. And while the older boys are doing a much better job trying and liking new foods these days, we still have a somewhat limited repetoir of dinner items everyone will eat. Lasagne happens to be one of them. Unfortunately, when the temperature outside starts climbing into the 90s and above I simply can’t stand to turn on the oven for an hour and a half, so we usually take a bit of a lasagne break over the summer. But not this summer! I recently discovered that my normal old lasagne recipe performs superbly in the crockpot – some of us even prefer it. If I happen to have cooked ground beef in the freezer I can get everything ready to go in under 15 minutes just before lunch, and by 6 pm we have a delicious dinner everyone will eat with nary a gag and a nice cool kitchen. Perfect.

Our lasagne is a very basic (read: easy & fast) recipe using jarred spaghetti sauce, which I know is sacrilege to some. If you want to substitute your own homemade sauce it should be pretty simple to do so. Also, there’s no need to precook your noodles OR to use oven ready lasagne noodles – the normal old kind soften up nicely in the slow cooker. I do use more sauce than usual in this recipe since the noodles suck up quite a bit of the moisture, but that leaves the lasagne with a lot of flavor. It cuts and serves beautifully.

NOTE: Please be sure NOT to use no-boil or oven-ready noodles, as they will get too mushy. Normal lasagne noodles work perfectly!

As usual, I forgot to put a yield on the recipe card, but I’d say it can feed 6 adults or up to 8 adults and kids (we have a family of 7 and almost always have a piece or two leftover). Also, I have an oval 6 qt crockpot – if yours is a different size or shape you may have to adjust the layers slightly.

Click here to be taken to a printable version, and check out the photo instructions at the end of the post.

(Just click the image above – normal click, not right click – to be taken to a downloadable/printable version.)