Lasagna Soup Recipe

Looking for a brand new experience, yet rather stick to the familiar? Check out this Lasagna soup recipe to find a feeling that’s dissimilar!

It seems that we are a sucker for things we already know. It comes down to our biology and how much our brain likes to save energy by preferring well known solutions that results in calculable rewards than anything else that needs extra work and dubious outcomes.

We may chastise ourselves for not doing things that we know, we should be doing to make our life, relationship, or health better but it’s not actually our fault that we don’t dare to do it.

Not to mention that if we’ve burnt ourselves a couple of times then it’s even harder to get up again and try. Furthermore, why bother at all if there is already something around that isn’t that bad.

The limits are in our head though, or more precisely in the primitive part of our brain that doesn’t want to push too hard if it’s not absolutely necessary. If we want to achieve something that’s different than our present state, we have to fight with our own biology first, and force it to do some work outside of its comfort zone.

This fight can be quite tiring and although many try every now and then without the proper understanding of our psychological and biological workings, it certainly doomed to failure.

Our behavior has been long studied, analyzed, and used to optimize desirable outcomes from casinoes through commerce to quite recently social media companies.

It turns out that our built-in preference for inertia makes us cling to known things so much that it is worth companies to sacrifice or more precisely, invest some of their incomes into differentiating themselves from others or in other words, build their brands.

Once we got into a specific brand, it takes quite an effort to ditch it and search for another one, even if we don’t really like the product the brand makes but it’s good enough to cover our needs. This is why every manufacturer’s main priority when launching a new product to create habits with it.

Reinforcing those habits later is also important but those messages would fall on flat ears without already shaped habits. Once we have been conditioned to the new product and show positive attitude towards it, the benefits of brand affiliation can be used to get us more familiar with other products.

Sure, if the new product is a disappointment then it may hurt the reputation of our trusted product but if it’s a success then it strengthens not just the brand’s standing but overall sales too.

The same way, new products benefit from brand loyalty, new dishes can lure us into trying them too. Who in their right mind wouldn’t like to try pizza sticks, pizza roll, pizza monkey bread, pull-apart pizza bread, skillet pizza, white pizza, roscon de reyes pizza or even low carb pizza?

Luckily, pizza is just flat bread that’s topped with tomato sauce, cheese and occasionally with something else, so doing that with another type of bread (except low carb), is probably a justifiable offense that could even turn out to be good.

Even though none of the above things has much to do with pizza, apart from, of course, they are made of roughly the same ingredients (except low carb), we still call them such, in order to give us a rough estimate, however far, of what we are going to get.

Apparently, we don’t just do it with pizza but with many other things, like Lasagna too. Since there are no rules for naming dishes or official lasagna governing body policing the world, even if we completely change the texture, hence flavor of the dish, we can still call it Lasagna if we used its ingredients as an inspiration for the dish.

With lasagna soup, this is the exact thing that happens. We take something that’s epic-ness is rarely disputed, take it to pieces, ram its soul into the dirt then present it like something worthy of praise and awe then hope for the best.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons / 25g Olive oil (NOT virgin)
1 medium / 150g Onion (diced)
3 teaspoons / 15g Salt
5 cloves / 15g Garlic (finely diced)
1 lb / 500g Ground meat (beef)
4½ cup / 1000g Water
1 can / 800g Tomatoes
3 tablespoons / 50g Tomato paste
2 teaspoons / Basil
2 teaspoons / Oregano
1 teaspoon / 3g Black pepper (ground)
5 oz / 150g Pasta (Mafalda pasta looks like small lasagna sheets but any pasta would do it)
5 oz / 150g Mozzarella cheese
5 oz / 150g Ricotta cheese
1 oz / 30g

How to make Lasagna soup

Heat oil to high then sauté (stir-fry) diced onion and half of the salt until glassy/translucent look, about 3 – 5 minutes.
Add finely diced or minced garlic. Continue sautéing until garlic gets fragrant, about 2 minutes.
Mix in the ground meat then stir-fry until browned and no pink meat can be found, about 5 minutes.
Preparing the onion and browning the meat is best in a skillet but making soups will most likely require something with higher walls. If we’ve been preparing a fairly small amount then we may stick to the skillet all way long or do everything in a pot. Pour in water, tomato and tomato paste then bring it to boil.
Mix in basil, oregano, black pepper and the rest of the salt.
Reduce heat to low and with the lid ¾ way on, simmer away about ¼ of the liquid or until desired thickness is achieved, about 60 minutes.
Cook pasta according to the instructions on packaging. Try to make al dente to create a contrast for the soup and ensure that the pasta is still firm if left in a soup for a while, that is about 5 – 6 minutes cooking after adding the pasta to boiling salty water.
Grate cheese. Once the soup is ready, let it cool a bit then serve with pasta and cheese.