Cooking is something we do everyday in one way or the other. Whether we are making breakfast, lunch or dinner, making a ham sandwich or baking a cookie, we need a recipe to follow. There are times we may not follow a written recipe because it is one that is very easy to prepare and we have it memorized, like making a sandwich, but in actual fact we are still following a recipe even if it is one that is in our subconscious. People are also more health conscious nowadays. A lot of people are on a healthy diet and they want to cook healthy diet food. They know that a complete meal should consist of every food group such as meat, carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, and so no. The healthy diet pyramid shows you what should be in your ingredients.
Here is a great crockpot recipe for a pasta dish main course that has ingredients from many food groups. This pasta dish is chicken lasagna. It sounds like a simple dish but it is wonderfully delicious. This recipe serves 4 people and takes approximately 5 hours to prepare. It is not difficult to cook but not too easy either. However, the resulting dish is so tasty that it is well worth the effort.
Ingredients for the Chicken Lasagna
You need about 1 pound of cooked, shredded chicken breasts or more if you like more meat in your lasagna. Then, you need 1 large onion, finely chopped, 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped, 2 jars (17 oz.) of spaghetti sauce, 1 package (18 ounce) “no-cook” lasagna noodles, 1 package (9 oz.) of shredded mozzarella cheese, 1 container (9 oz.) of ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup milk, and 1 egg. Now, if you have a type of vegetables that you really like, such as eggplants, you may add some in your ingredients too but make sure they are finely chopped.
Let’s Start Cooking!
First you may want to brown the onions, any other vegetables, and garlic in a non-stick pan. Then you will add the spaghetti sauce and mix everything together very well. In a separate bowl, you can mix the cheeses, milk and egg. Grease the crockpot a little. Place 1/4 of the spaghetti meat sauce mixture in the bottom of the crockpot then, 1/3 of a layer of noodles. You can break the noodles to fit your crockpot. After that, you can place roughly 1/3 of the cheese mixture on top. Then, repeat the process of: sauce, noodles, cheese for two more layers. Put the remaining meat sauce on top. Cook in the crockpot on low for about 6 hours until the noodles are soft.