When you can’t eat gluten, dairy or tomatoes, pretty much every lasagna recipe is out of the question. We’ve had lasagna a few times recently and I’ve had to kindly pass, knowing it would just kill my insides and leave me regretting it days after. BUT that also left me dying to put some lasagna in my mouth. So much so that I couldn’t stop thinking about it and had to get creative to make my own version of a lasagna I could eat and enjoy.
This recipe is Vegan but feel free to add in a scoop or two of ground beef. Since we are meat eaters a small percentage of the time, when we made the recipe we added in the ground beef and enjoyed all the bursts of flavours together. Get ready, your taste buds are about to have a serious party (wink wink).
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Total time: 35 mins
Makes: 4 hearty servings
Ingredients:
- 1 Tablespoon of olive oil
- 6 cloves of garlic (chopped)
- 3/4 of a large white onion
- Juice from one large lemon
- 6 cups of vegetable broth (I use my homemade which has no sodium)
- 2 teaspoons of dried oregano
- 2 teaspoons of dried basil
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/4 cup Nutritional yeast
- 2 teaspoons agave
- 1 full box of brown rice lasagna sheets
- Salt and pepper to taste
Cashew Cream
- 1 Cup of raw cashews, soaked
- 1 cup of vegetable broth
- 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice
- pinch of salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup of unsweetened Almond milk
Garnish
- Fresh basil
- chopped green onions
Directions
- If you can soak your cashews overnight so they are nice and soft to make the cream. If you forgot, like I do most of the time, boil water and let them boil for about 10-15 minutes. Then let them sit in the hot water until you need them.
- In a large pot, add the olive oil and the garlic and diced onions to sauté. Let them simmer for and caramelized for 10-15 mins.
- You can add your beef to the same pot and cook it together until its no longer pink. OR I find even the organic ground beef I use tends to be a bit oily. I like to cook the beef in a separate pan, once its cooked I drain the oil, rinse with Water and then add it to the onions and garlic. Either way will work based on your preference.
- Add in the spices, lemon juice and broth.
- Whisk in the nutritional yeast and the agave.
- While it simmers add all the ingredients for the cashew cream to a little processor. Blend well until its a creamy consistency.
- Add the cashew cream to the soup.
- Break the noodles into chunks
- *TIP I find brown rice noodles to leave the water really mucky when they boil, so I boil them partially in a separate pot before adding them to the soup, so the soup doesn’t get mucky from the noodles.
- Add them to the pot of soup once they are 3/4 of the way cooked.
- Let soup simmer until noodles are cooked perfectly.
- Garnish with fresh basil and chopped green onions.
ENJOY!