Crock Pot Lasagna

As I have mentioned before, I have a love-hate relationship with my crock pot, but recently I have been seeing a lot of recipes for crock pot lasagna, and I thought that I should give my own lasagna recipe a try in the dreaded crock pot.  Turns out it was pretty good.  I still prefer the old fashioned lasagna in a pan, but for a day when I cannot be home to put it in the oven, this will do.

A few things I learned...

1. It does not hold together like a regular lasagna...treat it more like a really thick stew.
2. My kids like lasagna better in a bowl.
3. The noodles get quite soft.
4. I had to tweak the recipe a little bit from my old stand by, so if you decide to use your own recipe instead of mine keep that in mind.  One of the things that I decided to do was to leave out the eggs.  The eggs are used to bind your lasagna, so it may have been part of the reason that it did not hold together like a regular lasagna, however I would still not use eggs in this.
5. Normally you would let a lasagna stand for 15 minutes or so before cutting it which helps it to set.  With this lasagna you cannot do that.

Here we go...

Crock Pot Lasagna 

Ingredients:
1 pound of ground beef, cooked and drained
1 box Barilla no cook lasagna noodles (you will not use the whole box)
5 cups of your favorite tomato sauce (homemade or store bought)
4 cups of shredded mozzarella
1 Tablespoon of dried basil, or 2 Tablespoons of fresh basil
8 ounces sour cream
8 ounces cottage cheese

Directions:
Mix the basil, sour cream, and cottage cheese together in a bowl and set aside.

Pour one cup of tomato sauce on the bottom of your crock pot.  Place a layer of lasagna noodles on top of the sauce.  You will need to break the noodles in half to make them manageable to serve.  I found that I broke a few of them into more pieces to make each layer complete.  Work it like a puzzle.

Spoon 1/3 of the sour cream mixture on top of the noodles and spread it around as best you can.

Sprinkle 1/3 of the meat mixture on top of the lasagna.  Top with 1 cup of sauce and 1 cup of mozzarella cheese.

Repeat...

Noodles
1/3 Sour cream mixture
1/3 meat
1 cup sauce
1 cup mozzarella

Repeat again...

Noodles
1/3 Sour cream mixture
1/3 meat
1 cup sauce
1 cup mozzarella

Then for the last layer...

Noodles
1 cup sauce
1 cup mozzarella

Cook on low for 4 hours.