Smoked Lasagna

[JDSwan87]

Anyone ever make smoked lasagna? Sitting here at work, it popped in my head... I searched "lasagna " in the forums but only got 2 hits...

 

[SuperDave]

Everyone seems to love smoked Mozzarella so a pan of lasagna with a 1/2" deep topping of cheese sounds pretty good.

 

[JDSwan87]

Yeah, I'm thinking make everything like we (my wife, not me per say) normally does but hold back on the final layer of cheese. Thinking smoke top cheese-less for 3 hours at 235 with 3oz of apple or cherry, remove and coat heavily with cheese, then smoke for another 2 hours with 2 oz of apple or cherry at 235. Sound OK?

 

[SuperDave]

There are a lot of ways you could go.  I don't believe there would be a lot of value in the smoked pan because there isn't a lot of penetration.  Most of the smoke sits on top.  I might consider smoking some of my sauce ingredients before building my sauce, like the browned ground beef, onion, bell pepper, mushrooms and then making the sauce.  I think the smoke flavor would be more infused into the lasagna and frankly, not take as long.

 

[JDSwan87]

So you're saying brown the ground beef, mix up all my sauce ingredients and smoke the sauce mix separate. Then build the lasagna, coat the top with cheese and smoke again for cheese melting/final cooking?

 

[DivotMaker]

What if you smoked the key ingredients, and then built it?  You could spread out a layer of hamburger and/or sausage, maybe 1/2" thick, add some garlic and onions to the shelf (you'll need a seafood shelf), then smoke them for awhile (maybe an hour or two at a low temp).  Then, build the lasagna and add some separately cold-smoked mozzarella and/or provolone cheese, then bake in the oven?  Just a thought...

 

[SuperDave]

I was thinking more along the lines of what Tony is suggesting.  Smoking the sauce (liquid) usually takes on too strong of smoke flavor.  Smoking the veggies and meat would produce a lot of smoke flavor without hopefully being over powering.

 

[JDSwan87]

I'm OK with the smoking of the ground beef and veggies but I've NEVER cold smoked before. Could incold smoke the ground beef and veggies all together? (The ground beef would be cooked already)

 

[DivotMaker]

You wouldn't want to cold smoke the meat and veggies, Josh.  You'll get much better results starting with raw meat and veggies going into a cold smoker, then set to 225° until done.  Go to the cold smoking section of the recipes, and check it out.  Great way to do cheese, and not that hard.  Some (like Dave) have improvised cold smoke plates (you have to isolate the heat from the chamber), but I have the SI cold smoke plate.  Good stuff, if you like smoked cheese!