Friends, this turned out to be the best tasting Mexican Lasagna I’ve ever had. I have had many over the years- made a few different ones myself, but it always seemed to me that something could have been better. Well, yesterday’s lasagna started out as a pan of enchiladas. I have some shredded turkey from the weekend in the fridge and I started thinking about how to combine that with either the corn or flour tortillas I had on hand. I had a quart jar in the freezer of homemade Texas Enchilada Sauce which had about 3 cups of sauce in it… I had some Colby-Jack cheese on hand… And THEN I found a container of leftover ground beef taco meat- just a cup left, so not enough to do much with. Rummaging through the fridge I pulled out some cream cheese, various jars of salsa, sour cream, cottage cheese, half a cup of pumpkin puree and some plain tomato sauce.
Then I thought of some pinto beans and put them on to cook, pulled a can of corn from the pantry, added some taco seasoning to my pile, and it was clear I had WAY too many things on hand to just make a pan of enchiladas with. I suppose I could have made multiple pans of different kinds of enchiladas, but I did only have 3 cups of good enchilada sauce. So instead I set out to kill multiple birds with one stone. Honestly, the biggest thing I was excited to accomplish here was using up all these little bits of random leftovers that were at the point of needing to be used or tossed. I started musing about what I would like to layer into my lasagna and started assembling my ingredients.
And while I don’t have a specific recipe in the end here, what I do have is a procedure that you can use yourself sometime when you find you have all these mystery bits of leftovers on hand.
First, the beans. I had cooked up two cups of dried beans, which amounted to about 5 cups of cooked beans. I put 3 cups of the pinto beans on a pie plate and mashed them up with a fork. To this I added my one cup of ground beef taco meat and the 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree. The seasoned taco meat wasn’t enough to season everything else, so then I added a generous sprinkle of taco seasoning and a bit of salt. The pumpkin contributed a small bit of sweetness, but it also lightened up the texture of the mashed beans significantly, and in the end, you certainly couldn’t taste that there was pumpkin in that mixture. The beans would be one of my lasagna layers.
Next I looked at my shredded turkey. I took about 2 cups of the turkey and chopped it up a little more finely than what it was. I added one can of corn to the turkey, and then added 1/2 cup of sour cream. Next it needed seasoning, so I used 1/2 a teaspoon of smoked paprika, as well as some salt and pepper. A splash of salsa finished that mixture up. In retrospect, I think the smoked paprika was fabulous, but a bit of chipotle would have been even better. Turkey/Corn mixture was another layer.
Now, with regular lasagna there is always that layer of cheese, and this was going to follow along those lines as well. I took a block of cream cheese and softened it in the microwave for a minute. Then I stirred in another 1/2 cup of sour cream, my cottage cheese (about 3/4 of a cup), one egg, and a generous sprinkle of Garlic Pepper, along with a touch of salt. Creamy white component done.
I shredded up my Colby Jack cheese until I had about 4 cups of shredded cheese, and then I gave some attention to my enchilada sauce. I wanted it a bit thinner for the lasagna, so I added the 3/4 cup of plain tomato sauce as well as a cup of my homemade salsa. So here we have the entire cast of characters together and waiting for assembly.
Other than the dried beans and the can of corn… this pretty much is a fridge full of leftovers, with a few things also pulled from the freezer. Way too often I find myself forgetting those random bits of things in the fridge, and this is a great way to put them to use! Because this worked so well, I have made a mental note to actually tuck some of these things into the freezer- like that bit of pumpkin puree and small amount of taco meat.
After going back and forth several times, I finally decided to go with the flour tortillas over the corn tortillas. I thought the corn would have given a great flavor, but I thought the flour would behave more like lasagna noodles- they would suck up some of the liquids in the lasagna and get all sorts of delicious as it baked up. I started by lightly rubbing my 9×13 pan with olive oil, and then took one cup of my sauce and spread that around the bottom of the pan as well. For the tortillas, I placed two side by side in the middle, and then ripped a few tortillas in half to get nice clean edges and fill in the gaps. Here is what that looks like:
I did that for two layers of the tortillas. With the third layer I added a third tortilla to the middle of the pan because there was a little more room to do so.
From there it was a simple matter of layering everything. I started with half of the bean mixture onto the tortillas-spreading the beans all the way to the edges. On top of the beans I poured half of my cheese sauce and spread that around as well. Next came the turkey/corn mixture, followed by a light sprinkling of one cup of the shredded cheese. On top of that I spread another layer of the red sauce, and then added my next layer of tortillas. I repeated those layers in the exact same way. After the third layer of tortillas had been added, I poured the remainder of the red sauce on, and then sprinkled the top with the remaining two cups of shredded cheese.
I covered the whole thing with non-stick foil and popped it into a 350º oven for an hour. On the rack below the lasagna I also put in an empty baking sheet to catch drips, since I really filled the pan! I removed the foil after the first hour and baked it for another 30 minutes. As anyone knows, a lasagna also needs rest time when it comes out of the oven, so at that point, I took it out, put it on a baking rack to cool, and covered it back up loosely with foil. I waited 20 minutes before cutting into it. I probably could have waited a full 30 minutes, but the kids were home from dance and no one wanted to wait anymore.
The lasagna was spectacular. As I was making it, I found myself wishing I had tomatillos and cilantro on hand- as I would have added a layer of green to the lasagna, but that may have been overkill. Every bite of this lasagna was spectacular- Andy actually debated going back for thirds, but resisted when I let him know that leftovers were going to be available to him later in the week.
Lesson learned. Lasagna for me (whether Mexican or Italian) always starts with a trip to the store to get the original ingredients. Turns out that combining a whole pile of leftovers into one dish is even better. And it didn’t taste like leftovers, it just lasted like an incredibly cheesy and delicious Mexican Lasagna.
