This is a hearty, meaty lasagna recipe. You have two choices here. If you’re up for it, you can make your own sauce, which takes about 2 hours. Or, to save time, you can substitute your favorite store-bought sauce. We have done both. It’s all up to you. Below in the recipe, you will see our method for homemade sauce as well as a method for store-bought.

Making the sauce requires some hands-on time. This is because we cook the sausage, beef and vegetables separately. We cook the sausage first then then transfer to a clean bowl. Next, the beef is browned and finally we cook some onion and carrot. Even though we cook each part separately, we do it all in the same pot. So, lots of flavor is left in the bottom of the pot, which helps add flavor to our sauce.

One more note, here. Our homemade sauce will make more than what’s needed for one lasagna. Since it takes so long to make the sauce, we always make sure we have enough for a second lasagna or to use, as is, over pasta for another night. You can save the extra sauce in the refrigerator up to 5 days or in the freezer up to 3 months.