Avoid This Major Mistake When Layering Homemade Lasagna

A freshly made lasagna is a showstopper of a dinner, but one common mistake could derail the dish. Giorgia Sinatra, creative director at Pasta Sisters in Los Angeles, grew up making fresh pasta with her mother and siblings in Padova, Italy before coming to the U.S. and eventually starting the family business. Drawing from her impeccable pasta pedigree, Sinatra warned Daily Meal about one tragic lasagna error.

When layering your lasagna, she told us to "put some sauce in the bottom of the pan, because if you start the layering with the pasta, it's most probably going to stick to the pan." A base layer of sauce forms a critical barrier between the delicate pasta and scorching hot pan, which helps keep your noodles free of the pan and your lasagna together. Without saucing the pan first, she explained, "you're basically going to lose the first pasta layer." Lasagna often only has three to five layers, so losing 20 to 33% of the dish to the pan would be a disaster.

Not saucing the bottom of the pan is just one of the lasagna mistakes you didn't know you were making, Giorgia Sinatra has another vital tip, this one for preventing burnt noodle corners at every layer. As she explained to Daily Meal, "when I make the lasagna I cut the corners of the pasta ... I cut it so that it's perfectly matching the shape of the pan."

"Personally, I don't like when those corners become a little too hard," she said of untrimmed lasagna noodles. "So I like to cut those little corners so I have a very smooth and even corner that stays soft when baked." Use Sinatra's tips for any type of homemade lasagna, not just the Italian-American classic, loaded with marinara and ricotta. Saucing the pan and trimming noodle corners also works with the green spinach noodles of an authentic lasagna Bolognese, that another expert told us all about.