I love ALL versions of lasagna, but some nights I don’t have the time or energy to make the fully layered real deal. On those nights, I make this super quick one-pot skillet lasagna that gives me all that cozy cheesy goodness in just about 30 minutes. Skillet lasagna has been a staple in my house for almost ten years, so I hope it becomes one of your regular go-to recipes, too!
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Lasagna for Lazy Nights
This super simple skillet lasagna follows the same formula as my other one pot pasta recipes. The pasta, in this case, lasagna noodles, are cooked right in the sauce so you only need to use one pan and every drop of flavor soaks right into the pasta. I made this recipe as simple as possible, using all the shortcuts, so it’s the easiest to make when you’re the shortest on time.
What You’ll need
Here are the ingredients you’ll need to make this easy skillet lasagna:
- Italian sausage: sausage is packed with herbs and spices which give flavor to the entire skillet without you having to add ten different herbs and spices.
- Fresh garlic: because every recipe needs to start with fresh garlic. ;)
- Pasta sauce: I used a store-bought sauce here just to make the recipe super quick and easy, but you could always make your own from scratch using our weeknight pasta sauce recipe (sub Italian sausage for the beef).
- Italian seasoning: an extra dose of herbs and spices just for good measure! Using a pre-made blend cuts down on the number of ingredients you have to measure.
- Lasagna noodles: because this is “lasagna,” right?? We break the noodles into smaller pieces so they cook quickly and can be easily stirred into the sauce. You can use other pasta shapes if you prefer, but the cooking time may be slightly different.
- Cheese: We used three cheeses in this recipe to make it extra cozy. A mixture of ricotta and Parmesan are added in dollops onto the pasta, then everything is covered in a blanket of melty mozzarella!
What Else Can I Add?
Another reason skillet lasagna is so great is that it’s actually quite versatile! You can add or substitute many of the ingredients to make it your own. Here are some ideas for add-ins or substitutions for the ingredients in skillet lasagna:
- Sautéed vegetables: finely chop then sauté just about any vegetable in the skillet after the beef has been browned. Try zucchini, mushrooms, bell peppers, eggplant, or more. Make sure to cook out most of the water to avoid a soupy lasagna.
- Meat: Add more meat or swap out the Italian sausage for ground beef, pork, or even diced chicken. Just make sure to add additional seasoning to the sauce to make up for what is lost in the Italian sausage.
- Sauce: Experiment with different flavors of store-bought sauces. Make your sauce spicy by adding a pinch or two of crushed red pepper.
- Cheese: try topping your lasagna with some crumbled feta for an extra kick!
What to Serve with Skillet Lasagna
I always love serving heavier dishes like lasagna with a light and simple side salad to brighten up the meal, but you also can’t forget the garlic bread for sopping up every last drop of that sauce!
Skillet Lasagna
Servings 4Ingredients
- 1 Tbsp olive oil ($0.16)
- 1/2 lb. Italian Sausage ($2.25)
- 2 cloves garlic ($0.16)
- 24 oz. pasta sauce ($1.89)
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning ($0.05)
- 9 lasagna noodles ($0.90)
- 1 cup ricotta cheese ($1.99)
- 1/4 cup Grated Parmesan ($0.40)
- 1/4 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper ($0.02)
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella ($1.17)
Instructions
- Add the Italian sausage and olive oil to a large deep skillet. Cook over medium heat until the sausage is cooked through.
- Mince the garlic, add it to the skillet with the sausage, and continue to sauté over medium for one more minute.
- Add the pasta sauce, Italian seasoning, and water to the skillet then stir to combine.
- Break the lasagna noodles into one to two-inch pieces, then stir them into the sauce in the skillet.
- Place a lid on the skillet, turn the heat up to medium-high, and allow the sauce to come up to a boil.
- Once boiling, give the skillet a brief stir, replace the lid, then turn the heat down to medium-low. Let the noodles simmer in the sauce, stirring occasionally, until tender (about 15 minutes). If the sauce becomes too dry before the noodles are tender, add more water and continue to simmer.
- While the noodles are simmering, stir together the ricotta, Parmesan, salt, and pepper in a separate bowl.
- Once the noodles have cooked, add the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles in small dollops. Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella over top.
- Place the skillet under your oven's broiler for a few minutes or just until the cheese is melted and slightly browned (make sure to use an oven-safe skillet, no lid). Or, place the lid on the skillet and continue to cook over medium-low heat until the cheese is melted. Serve hot and enjoy!
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Nutrition
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!How to Make Skillet Lasagna – Step by Step Photos
Brown ½ lb. Italian sausage in a deep skillet with 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat. Once browned, add two cloves of minced garlic and continue to sauté for one minute more.
Add one 24oz. jar of your favorite pasta sauce, ½ tsp Italian seasoning blend, and 1 cup water to the skillet. Stir to combine.
Break nine lasagna noodles (½ lb.) into one to two-inch pieces.
Stir the broken lasagna noodles into the sauce in the skillet. Place a lid on top, turn the heat up to medium-high, and bring the sauce up to a boil. Once boiling, give the skillet a good stir, replace the lid, then turn the heat down to medium-low.
Allow the noodles to simmer in the sauce, stirring occasionally, until they are tender (about 15 minutes). If the sauce gets too thick before the noodles are tender, simply add a little more water and allow them to continue to simmer.
In a medium bowl, combine 1 cup ricotta cheese, ¼ cup grated Parmesan, ¼ tsp salt, and ¼ tsp pepper. Stir until evenly combined.
Add the ricotta mixture to the skillet in dollops across the top, then sprinkle 1 cup shredded mozzarella over top.
To get the cheese nice and melty and browned, place the skillet lasagna under your oven’s broiler for a few minutes (no lid and make sure you’re using an oven safe skillet and watch it closely!). Alternatively, you can place a lid on the skillet and let it cook over medium-low for a few minutes more until the cheese has melted.
Serve hot with some crusty garlic bread for dipping! 🤤 (garnished with parsley, not needed for flavor)
I love how easy and delicious this recipe is – we’ll often add some zucchini and broccoli and use ground turkey instead of sausage. If you don’t have lasagna noodles, any pack of pasta will work!
This was SO good! I used cottage cheese instead of ricotta because that’s all I had. I love how quickly it came together! I will definitely be making this again!
This was great. I used vegan sausage, fried it up in the beginning as per the recipe, then removed it and added it back in just before topping with the cheese to preserve the texture. Easy and I’d make it again.
Soooo good. My oven hasn’t been working but this is SO delicious.
My husband and I love this recipe. Will make again.
YUM. So quick and easy, and I love that it only needs half a pound of meat! This was a huge hit.
I’ve made this 3 times now and it’s DELICIOUS every time. I adjusted for my family – used less lasagna noodles, more cheese, etc – but even the very first time we made it without doing much adjusting, it was wonderful. This has quickly become a favorite of ours to make!
The lasagna never got soft. Kept adding water. Cooked for 30 minutes. Finally ate crunchy noodles.
That’s extremely odd. Any lasagna noodle should be cooked after that long. Did you use standard white flour lasagna noodles?
This was amazing. Although, I think elbow macaroni would be easier. Do you think there is an option to bake it so it can be made for a crowd? Stove top version has its limitations. I used Good brand cottage cheese instead of ricotta and it was crazy good.
You used cottage cheese for the top that’s what I’m using and mix it with parmeson cheese. Thankyou
Easy and delicious. I sautéed mushrooms and onions before adding garlic. Used frozen Italian meatballs from Costco instead of sausage. I put them in the sauce with the noodles to simmer. I had to add water a couple times so it wouldn’t scorch while the noodles finished cooking. Served with roasted broccoli on the side.
Tried this tonight… nice, simple, and extremely tasty 👅
Another winner from BudgetBytes ! Went together easily, tasted delicious and preparing with only one pan for clean-up was a bonus. The only change I made was to leave off the mozarella at the end. The Ricotta/Parm mixture was just the right amount of cheese for us.
Turned out great – thanks!
We had this for a nontraditional day-before-Ash-Wednesday supper (sausage! lots of rich dairy! we used jarred Rao’s sauce to feel slightly fancy!), and I added spinach because I had a ton lying around. My husband loved it. I’d like to try it again with less ricotta and a different sauce flavor (marinara rather than the sausage-and-mushroom we used), but it was a lot less work than traditional lasagna, worth it on a weeknight.
So easy and satisfying to make in hardly any time at all. Don’t skimp on cheap marinara if you’re buying store bought though. No meat necessary.
This was so good! One of my resolutions was to cook for the new year. Made this for my family of four (dad, myself, and two brothers) and it was devoured QUICK. Absolutely do not expect to have leftovers of this dish lol. :,)
I am disappointed by this recipe. I liked your older recipe and am fortunate to have printed it out years ago and actually saved it. I will use the old recipe, circa 2016. The beauty of your old school recipes was not needing to rely on things like jar spaghetti sauce.
I love Budget Bytes recipes, I really do. But this one was sadly terrible, I won’t make it again. It was way too thick with the ricotta on top and somehow after I broiled the cheese, the sauce got so thick that it was hard to eat. We won’t make it again.
Delicious! I love how it’s a smaller portion of lasagna. Instead of Italian sausage, I used ground beef according to the comment below.
This is a great base, you can always saute or add veggies (I added onion, bell pepper and garlic). It was lasagna without all the work and since lasagna is my favorite food – this is perfection!
Way easier than traditional lasagna I thought pretty good, husband liked it so much he went for 3rds. the only sub I had to make was 180 Grams dry egg noodles (Aldi didn’t have any lasagna noodles!) otherwise followed the recipe as is, would love to try adding some veggies next time to bump the flavors and nutrition.
I made this last night (with a few minor tweaks) and my boyfriend said he liked it better than when I make “regular” lasagna! Soooo good, adding this one to the recipe stack. Yum.
This was amazing! Lasagna is my favorite food, but it can be quite the hassle to make. This was quick, easy, and delicious! To boost the nutritional value, I added 1 cup of frozen spinach (thawed and chopped), one 13 oz can of mushrooms, two bell peppers (orange and red), and half an onion. Will definitely be putting this recipe into the family rotation!
This was good and easy to make. Easy to sub with what I had in the house instead of running out to buy ingredients.
– 225g (dry measured) of whole wheat rotini noodles
– added some fresh basil pesto after the meat sauté step
– used crumbled feta instead or ricotta
– added about 2 lbs chopped mushrooms and a handful of spinach
Nice recipe and my toddlers ate it. Thanks for the great framework, fully acknowledging that I did change it a bit!
Hi Beth! Would you be willing to send me a copy of the old recipe of the skillet lasagna with the wine in it! That was my favorite and I was heart broken I didn’t print a copy before it was taken down. I’m sure this one is fantastic too!
I got you! xoxo -Monti
I made this tonight and it got pretty good reviews. The one thing that would have been helpful is if the lasagna noodle quantity was also given in grams since lasagna noodles, especially abroad, come in various sizes. (Ovens are smaller in Europe, so the noodles are shorter to accommodate smaller baking dishes.) My best guess is that 9 lasagna noodles/sheets in the US is equivalent to 230-250g. (But if you could weigh them and add that information to the recipe, that would be super helpful.) Also, be aware that if you use a chunkier sauce you may need to add more water. I added closer to 2 cups because one wasn’t enough to cover most of the pasta. I would consider making this again for a quick weekday dinner for four, but would make a more traditional lasagna if guests were joining us.
I struggled a bit too because they also vary some in the US. But in the step by step photos section it does clarify 1/2 pound (226g) of noodles, so your estimate is pretty close.
A favorite, although I can’t say I followed the recipe exactly. Substitutions were cottage cheese for ricotta (less expensive), the addition of 8 oz or so of frozen spinach (to improve nutrition), whole wheat noodles (because I had that but did not have lasagna), and homemade marinara sauce (because I got several cans of 28 oz tomatoes on sale for $.50k). Adjusted seasonings. Easy to make, filling, frugal, delicious. What more could you want?
I’m excited to try this, but I have a question: if I were to substitute ground beef for the Italian sausage, how much additional Italian seasoning should I put in to make up for it? I’m terrible at judging this sort of thing and don’t want to over (or under)-do it.
Hi ML- we haven’t done this so we can’t give you an exact answer. The best I can say is that the general rule is 1 teaspoon of salt/seasoning per pound of meat. If I were you I’d add a 1/2 teaspoon more of Italian seasoning and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and go from there. Again- untested. xoxo -Monti
Finally tried it tonight with ground beef and added Italian seasoning and salt per the above. Absolutely delicious! We’re adding this to our weeknight repertoire. Thank you so much!
Love that!! xoxo
I used what I had on hand, and put together a quick and delicious dinner. Ground beef instead of sausage, cottage cheese instead of ricotta, and added some mushrooms and sautéed chard for veggies. I did have to add water twice to keep the pasta from drying out. Great skillet meal!
In the nutritional information, how much exactly is one serving?
I don’t have an exact volume for the serving size, but it’s ¼ of the total skillet.
Love this dish! Came together super easy and was so good! Thank you for this easy version of lasagna!!
Why wouldn’t u use oven ready lasagna noodles?
Hi Patricia! Oven-ready noodles are $0.40 more expensive at our local grocery store. If it’s in your budget, go for it! The cooking time will change, of course. Though I am unsure of how much as we haven’t tested it. XOXO -Monti
I’ve loved this recipe for years. I loved the previous version you had here, and I’ll probably stick with that, as it was always spectacular. Always a favorite.
This was delicious and so easy! I couldn’t believe how fast it came together – all the flavors of lasagna without so much fuss! I will definitely put this into regular rotation.
I only used half a container of ricotta so I froze the rest. I’m hoping it’ll still be good for another batch. I hate to waste it. Any luck freezing ricotta and then using in a recipe like this?
Ricotta is one cheese that I haven’t tried freezing, so I’m not sure how it would hold up. If you’d like to be safe, here are our Ricotta recipe archives that you can browse for ways to use up your leftovers. :)
It seems to me that you’ve posted this recipe before, because it’s one of my favorite things–and pretty much just as written. I know I didn’t think it up myself! It’s perfect for a small family–2 servings now, 2 for later. It’s also easy to double and use a 12″ skillet. I usually add diced onion and sliced mushrooms, and if I have some fresh spinach to use up, that goes in it, too. I make it in a straight sided 10″ stainless steel skillet, and would use a slightly smaller one to get thicker slices if I had one of the right shape. This economical recipe proves that lasagna need not be an hours long chore!
Yes, this is a tweaked, simplified, version of the recipe she’s had for years.