spicy mushroom broken lasagna.
a good way to use up lasagna noodles, this simple vegetarian pasta dish is bursting with spicy flavor and ready in less than 30 minutes.
Makes: 2 servings Prep time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes jump to recipe.
Do you have a favorite “clean out the fridge” meal?
There’s something really fun about having just enough stuff in the fridge to make something random out of. A half-used onion, a bundle of broccoli rabe, and a wrinkled bell pepper become your new favorite veggie and romesco. Forgotten potatoes, wilting kale, and a casing of sausage become a delicious Tuscan potato soup. They’re necessary, sometimes, when you just can’t reasonably buy more stuff to pack into the pantry.
This recipe is perfect for those nights. I don’t particularly like mushrooms, so whenever I have a recipe that uses them, I tend to have a few leftover that just… sit (okay, if you know me well, you know I hate mushrooms, but I feel awkward admitting that on a mushroom recipe). And mushrooms last a surprisingly long time in the refrigerator, but not forever. So often, if I have a box that went unused, it stays that way. I know.
A lot of the foods I hate, I’m willing to eat, especially if they’re unrecognizable in the finished dish. This recipe is perfect for mushroom haters, too. Really, a good recipe to keep in your arsenal.
The mushrooms are chopped, sautéed, and coated in gochujang and tomato, the final result bursting with umami, heat, and texture. The sauce coats the noodles perfectly.
So the pasta. Another great clean-out-the-pantry thing.
Have you ever made lasagna? Many recipes (if not most, or all) require 12 sheets of lasagna noodles. You make 15 sheets just to be safe, but somehow, the box still has 8-10 sheets hanging out. Not enough for another lasagna, but way too many to just.. cook. To throw away.
So you have 8-10 lasagna noodles in a giant box in the pantry forever, until the day you get frustrated and toss it, feeling remorse that you threw away perfectly good pasta.
Well, here’s a way to use them, and it’s even better than half the pasta shapes out there. The way I made this dish, I cooked the pasta first, then cut them. This takes a long time, especially going one by one, but this can be done more quickly by stacking and slicing or by breaking the lasagna into pieces before cooking. Both methods may be a little less pretty, but for a dish like this, do you need pretty?
Basically what you get is a small pappardelle noodle or a miniature malfadine. Depends how you look at it. They’re really cute, embody everything good about a thick pappardelle, and use up those annoying few noodles left in the pantry.
I won’t keep rambling about the joys of old food — check it out for yourself.
spicy mushroom broken lasagna ingredients
butter: You can swap for olive oil, I just like the richness butter adds to mushrooms and gochujang. Use a splash of olive oil instead if preferred, and add more if the mushrooms start sticking.
mushrooms: I used white/button mushrooms for this recipe, but promise, absolutely any mushroom will work. I really love the flavor of baby bella/cremini mushrooms with tomato, and white cooked up almost the same way. Shiitake would make a really interesting base.
onion: You could use any onion here, but yellow or sweet will work best. I’d avoid red, too sharp.
garlic: You could toss in as many cloves of garlic as you want, but I used 3 large cloves and thought that was sufficient.
gochujang: I know, this is a random ingredient in an otherwise Italian-forward dish, but promise it makes so much sense in the end. It adds a peppery spice that is more robust than red pepper flakes or calabrian chiles. I’ve seen it at commercial grocery stores, but it’s likely you’ll need to make a trip to your local Asian market for it. Sold in tubes, tubs, and buckets. I usually get a mini tub of it and it lasts me forever.
tomato paste: Add this for a deeper tomato flavor. If you don’t have any on hand, you could skip this, but it adds a really nice, caramelized tomato flavor.
white wine: This is technically optional, but adds a nice flavor before dousing the dish in tomato. You only need a little bit. I always use sauvignon blanc for cooking because it’s never too offensive of a flavor and dry enough not to add any unwanted sweetness. Any somewhat-cheap sauv blanc will work.
tomato sauce: This recipe technically serves 2-4, depending on how much pasta water you use. I used a miniature can of tomato sauce and no pasta water at all for 2 servings. You could actually stretch this recipe into 4 servings with enough pasta water, or you could double the recipe to make sure all the flavor is there. You can also use tomato purée, crushed tomato, or diced tomato, if that’s what you have on hand instead.
white pepper: If you only have black pepper, just use that. White pepper will add an earthier spice that complements the gochujang, but don’t overthink it.
pasta: I wrote this recipe for the leftover lasagna noodles in the 1-lb box. It’s a little less than 1/2-pound of pasta, or about 1/2 of any other box of pasta. This recipe works best with thick noodles, like pappardelle, fettuccini, rigatoni, paccheri, or farfelle. If using the lasagna noodles, break them into smaller chunks before cooking or slice them into 2-inch pieces once al dente.
parmesan: Stir in some grated parm, then top with grated or shaved parm. Totally optional, and not doing so will not compromise the dish at all.
parsley: Also optional, but adds a little necessary green and a boost of freshness to the dish.
spicy mushroom broken lasagna pairing options
You could throw in some greens if you’re really into one-pot meals like I am, but this dish is pretty easy to pair with veggie-oriented sides, like the ideas below:
charred broccolini
blistered shishito peppers
baked eggplant
steamed broccoli or brussels sprouts
cheesy garlic bread
dry white wine, like sauvignon blanc
