How Long Do You Cook Lasagna With Fresh Pasta Sheets

Roasted Mushroom and Swiss Chard Lasagna; see recipe link, below. (Jennifer Chase/For The Washington Post)

Halfway through the parboiling of the pasta, thoughts rise up, like wisps of steam from the pot of hot water over which I am hovering as I work to corral slippery lasagna sheets onto a skimmer and into a bowl of ice water. The sheets keep sliding back into the pot, causing hot water to splash.

[Make the recipe: Roasted Mushroom and Swiss Chard Lasagna]

Those thoughts are: Why am I doing this? Is it worth the considerable time and effort, not to mention the inevitable mess, required to make lasagna from scratch? In addition to making, rolling out, cutting and precooking the fresh pasta, there is the making of the sauce — or sauces, since the particular lasagna I'm making calls for both meat sauce and a bechamel — plus the prepping of other filling ingredients, and the assembly of the thing. Also, the cleanup. Don't I have better things to do with my time?

Fair questions. After all, we live in the age of the Instant Pot. Meals that once took hours to prepare can now be ready in minutes, including lasagna. Yes, there are recipes for Instant Pot lasagna; just open a box of no-boil noodles, a jar of sauce and a container of ricotta cheese, layer them in your high-tech vessel, lock the lid into place and cook. Simplicity rules in the kitchen these days. Social media continuously points us toward "the best recipe" for this, or "the only recipe you'll ever need" for that. The hard work is done, the tweaks have been made, the guesswork taken out. Just follow the link to achieve home-cooking perfection.

Lasagna al Pesto; see recipe link, below. For full recipe, scroll to the bottom. (Goran Kosanovic/For The Washington Post)

I get it. Like any working person, I rely on one-pot meals and simple recipes that deliver a lot for minimal effort to get me through the week. And yet, I hope we haven't completely lost the desire to challenge ourselves in the kitchen, to tackle recipes like homemade lasagna that take time and effort and a certain amount of learned skill. These recipes provide us with a vital connection to the cooking process, and mastering them bestows upon the cook a real sense of accomplishment. Sometimes, the long way is the right way.

[Make the recipe: Lasagna al Pesto]

Real lasagna is a culinary marvel, if you think about it. It combines the richest of ingredients — egg pasta, hearty sauce, cheese — in multiple layers (generally between six and 12) that are then fused together in a hot oven. The delicate, paper-thin layers are sandwiched with a judicious amount of sumptuous filling so that the pasta and filling get equal billing. When you slice into it, your fork glides through the layers with hardly any effort. In your mouth, that bite of that lasagna is airy, almost weightless, a complete contradiction to what you know its components to be. It bears little resemblance to those shortcut lasagnas that are mostly meat and sauce and cheese separated by a few layers of dense frilly-edged noodles from a box.

I don't make lasagna every day, or even once a month. Lasagna is not a weeknight dish, nor was it ever meant to be. Even in Italy, lasagna is special-occasion fare, something you might make to ring in the New Year or celebrate Carnival, or for a loved one's birthday or anniversary.

Abruzzese-Style Lasagna With Meat Sauce and Mini Meatballs. See recipe link, below. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

I grew up on my mom's lasagna alla Bolognese, composed of emerald green spinach noodles layered with robust ground meat sauce and creamy bechamel. To many Italian food lovers, this is the ideal against which all others are measured. But the world of lasagna is wide and diverse, and over the years I've expanded my repertoire. I have a soft spot for classic "southern Italian" lasagna, that over-the-top concoction that combines meat sauce, sausage or mini meatballs (or both), ricotta and mozzarella. I also love lasagna alla Genovese, a pared-down affair, with pesto taking the place of ragù. Some years ago, in search of a hearty vegetarian lasagna, I came up with a version that alternates roasted mushrooms, sauteed greens and cheese.

[Make the recipe: Abruzzese-Style Lasagna With Meat Sauce and Mini Meatballs]

Lasagna can be traditional, contemporary, regional, seasonal, whimsical, plain or fancy. Its appeal is not in question. The issue is how to make it manageable. A recipe for from-scratch lasagna might be three recipes in one — the pasta, the sauce and the lasagna itself. But just because it's challenging doesn't mean it's inaccessible or not worth the effort. Just break it down into steps and pace yourself:

●Start with the sauce, and make your own, which will always be better than anything you buy. Making sauce is easy, but it takes time, especially if it's a long-simmered meat sauce. You can do this a couple of days ahead of assembling the lasagna and refrigerate it, or weeks ahead and store it in the freezer.

●Make the pasta. Mix the dough in the food processor and use a hand-crank pasta machine or the pasta rolling attachment of your mixer to roll out the sheets. Cut the lasagna strips and let them sit out for an hour or two to partially dry, then stack them and store them in the freezer. I don't recommend leaving lasagna sheets out to dry completely, as they are prone to curling, cracking and breaking.

Fresh Spinach Pasta for Lasagna; see recipe link, bottom. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Is store-bought pasta an option? Marcella Hazan, the grande dame of Italian cooking, wrote that lasagna "is never, but simply never, made with anything but homemade pasta dough." I agree with her, but you may not. The answer is, sure you can use commercial pasta, but the finished lasagna won't be as delicate without those fine sheets. Option 1: Look for fresh egg pasta sheets in the refrigerated section of the supermarket. These will be closest to homemade. Option 2: Use good-quality dried lasagna sheets. Follow the manufacturer's directions for parboiling, and make fewer layers than if using your own homemade pasta. Option 3: No-boil noodles are a last resort, in my opinion. When baked, they have a flabby consistency and no flavor.

[Make the recipe: Lasagna alla Bolognese]

●Assemble. The only onerous part of this step is the parboiling of the pasta, which has to be briefly cooked, plunged into ice water, then laid out. It's messy and tedious, and it's the only point at which I question whether I am wasting my time. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the pasta sheets — whether fresh or store-bought — need to be boiled at all, because they will soften and cook in the oven by absorbing sauce. It depends, of course, on how saucy your sauce is. For example, the no-cook method would not work with Genovese lasagna, which has very little liquid. Beyond that, I find that parboiling helps to set the texture of the pasta by cooking it evenly, and prevents it from becoming sticky when baked.

Once the pasta has been parboiled and all the components are laid out and ready, it's just a matter of layering them in a baking dish. The key here is not to overload; lasagna is a balance between pasta, sauce and fillings.

●Freeze it. I recommend you get all the work done ahead of time and freeze the unbaked lasagna so you have only to defrost and bake it for New Year's or whatever your special occasion. Bake it until you can hear it bubbling inside, and until the top is browned, the corners are curled up and slightly crunchy.

Finally, slice it, serve it and enjoy it with your guests knowing that, yes, your effort was worth it.

Marchetti is the author of, most recently, "Preserving Italy: Canning, Curing, Infusing, and Bottling Italian Flavors and Traditions" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). She'll join Wednesday's live chat with readers at noon, at live.washingtonpost.com.

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.