I love this time of year it puts me in the mood for butternut squash lasagna. Have you tried it yet? If you haven’t, you must. I love serving this along side a roasted turkey on Thanksgiving, to me it’s the perfect complement and a great pasta side dish.
Over the years I’ve made it so many different ways with a little tweaking here and there. I updated some of the pictures in this post to reflect that. Time has sure past since I first posted this back in 2009, and now it’s almost 2020 and I’m still making butternut squash lasagna!
I love adding a bechamel sauce that’s infused with herbs and garlic. In the past I infused the sauce with roasted garlic and rosemary then moved on to roasted garlic and sage. When you infuse those flavors into warm bechamel sauce it takes the whole lasagna to another level of flavor and taste!
Sometimes I’ll add on the layers ricotta cheese mix and some shredded mozzarella, sometimes no ricotta just bechamel, parmesan, the squash and maybe even another cheese like shredded fontina which melts really nice, it’s all good!
I think an important thing to remember is to make enough sauce. When I first started making this four cups of sauce was not enough because the pasta seems to soak it up and also you want a nice layer ending on the top, as well as some for serving.
And if you’re going to use the no-boil pasta, well that tends to need a lot of sauce anyway. So you be the judge, but I would start out with six cups of sauce, it’s better to have more than not enough.
I used one large butternut squash which was perfectly enough for a 13×9 pan.
If you’re going to add ricotta to your layers whisk an egg into it along with a generous helping of grated parmesan, salt and pepper. Start layering with the sauce, then pasta, more sauce, pasta, the squash, ricotta mixture, shredded cheese and more grated cheese.
- FOR THE BECHAMEL
- 6 cups whole milk
- 12 TBL. butter
- 12 TBL. flour
- ¾ cup grated parmesan cheese
- handful of rosemary or sage
- roasted garlic cloves, smashed
- Melt butter in a saucepan, whisk in flour. Cook and stir for around 1 minute to cook off the raw and starchy taste of the flour. Whisk in the milk stirring frequently until it starts to bubble ad thicken.
- Toss in the smashed roasted garlic, herbs and parmesan to infuse sauce. Let it sit for 20- 30 minutes
- Taste for salt and pepper and remove herbs.
- ROASTING THE BUTTERNUT SQUASH
- 1 large squash, peeled and cut into cubes, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and placed on a sheet pan until tender but not mushy at 400 degrees.
- Feel free to use any type of pasta noodle, no boil, boil, whole wheat or plain white or even fresh.
- You can add a ricotta mixture as stated in the post along with shredded fontina or mozzarella, the squash and bechamel.
- You can make it without ricotta by just using the butternut squash, shredded cheese and bechamel.
- You can make it noodle-less as shown in the post with a link by slicing planks of squash into . "pasta noodles".
I’m Marie, a wife, mother, mother-in-law, and gramma of two beautiful girls. My passion is food, clear and simple but especially Italian food, hence the name of my blog, Proud Italian Cook. I want you to feel right at home here so grab a cup of coffee, I’ll get the pastries, take a look around and enjoy your visit! {
