Hey cool kids! Look at this beautiful low carb friendly dish! Who knew eating low carb or keto could be so hearty?! Okay family this dish requires quite a bit of prep time and handle time. As always you can make any adjustments you see fit (I’ll make some suggestions along the way). Let’s get started.
What you’ll need:
2 Large eggplants
2 lbs of 80/20 ground beef (or turkey)
2 large eggs
1 large Spanish or yellow onion
4 large cloves of garlic
1 24oz jar of low carb marinara sauce (or make your own!)
1 14.5oz can of diced Roma tomatoes (no salt)
2 tbsp of tomato paste
6oz of grated Parmesan cheese
Seasoned salt (to taste)
Garlic salt (to taste)
black pepper (to taste)
1 tsp paprika
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp crush red pepper
2 tbsp of butter
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 tbsp of white sugar or granular swerve or granular lakanto sweetener
Whew! I know that was a lot of ingredients but this makes a huge lasagna. First to get started we want to slice about 2 inches off the top of the eggplant (where the little green hat is) and about an inch off the bottom. Then slice them long ways (about a 1/2 in to 1/4 in thick, pick a size and stick to it). They should look like the picture above.
Then set up your dredging stations. First station is your eggplants, 2nd is your 2 large eggs (beaten and seasoned with seasoned salt and black pepper), your 6 oz of Parmesan cheese seasoned with the paprika (mix the cheese & paprika well).
Coat both sides of the eggplant in the seasoned egg. Then coat both sides of the eggplant in the seasoned cheese.
Heat the olive oil and butter in a skillet on medium heat (I chose medium heat because we’re going to be multi tasking and I don’t want anything to burn). A way you can tell if the oil is ready is to drop a piece of Parmesan in the oil, if it sizzles, it’s ready. We want to brown both sides of the eggplant. It should look as pictured above.
Now we’re multitasking, as we fry all of our eggplant pieces we’re going to get started on our sauce.
We’re going to add our large onion and 4 cloves of garlic to a skillet that we’ve already preheated on medium heat with about 1/4 cup of olive oil (remember we’re multitasking and we don’t want anything to burn). Once we add our onions and garlic, season with black pepper, garlic salt, 1/2 tbsp crushed red pepper, and 1/2 tbsp of onion powder. Cook until the onions and garlic are soft and translucent (as pictured above).
Once the onions and garlic are soft add the tomato paste to the mixture and let that cook for about 2 minutes on medium heat. Then remove the mixture and place it into a bowl and add your ground beef (or turkey) to the pan and cook on a medium/high heat. Until all the meat is browned.
If you have any grease or juice in the pan from cooking the beef drain/strain all of it from the pan. Then place the pan with the beef in it back onto the stove and season the beef with seasoned salt, onion powder, black pepper, sugar (swerve or lakanto) crushed red pepper and garlic powder.
Once we’ve mixed all the seasonings into the meat. Add your marinara sauce, can of tomatoes and your garlic and onions mixture to the pan. Mix all of it together then let the sauce simmer for about 5 minutes so the sauce can marry.
Let’s start building our lasagna. Start buy adding some of your sauce to the bottom of the pan, this ensures that we don’t burn the lasagna while it’s in the oven.
Then we’ll add a layer of our beautiful eggplant pieces. You’ll notice that I did not throw away those little pieces of eggplant that we have from cutting off the tops and bottoms of the eggplants. Don’t tell anyone but there may be a couple of pieces missing because I was a little hungry will cooking lol!
Next add another layer of your meat sauce and any complimentary herbs. I used parsley and basil is another awesome herb we can use as well. Note: I did not add more cheese in between the layers because *whispers* I have a sliiiigghhhttt dairy allergy LOL! Feel free to add as much cheese in between the layers as you like there can never be too much cheese.
Repeat the layers in this order until your last layer is meat sauce. Then top with cheese. Place the lasagna (covered with foil) into a preheated 400°F oven for 20 minutes. Once the 20 minutes is up, remove the foil and broil the cheese on top until golden brown and just a tab crispy. Then let your lasagna rest for 20 minutes. We don’t want the lasagna to fall apart when we cut into it.
Finally we’re done! WHEW! Wipe the sweat off of our brows. Lasagna is definitely a time consuming dish but it’s so hearty and comforting, perfect for this weather. I do hope that you all give this dish a try. Let me know how it came out! I’ll see you all next time and as always sending lots of moxie your way.
-Roxy
RoxysGotMoxy 