Garten's easy turkey lasagna is a simple take on the standard recipe with a few surprising ingredients — namely, goat cheese for the filling.

Her recipe calls for sweet Italian turkey sausage, but since I had trouble finding that at any grocery stores near me, I used regular ground turkey and seasoned it with Italian seasoning, red-pepper flakes, and a bit of sugar.

After seasoning the ground turkey, making the sauce was pretty straightforward.

When I simmered onion, fresh herbs, canned crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste together, I had a pretty standard, meaty sauce to work with.

I'd never made lasagna with goat cheese, but Garten's recipe meant I stirred 3 to 4 ounces of it into 15 ounces of ricotta.

The combination was tart and flavorful. The flavors of the goat cheese stood out in the dish, especially with the lightness of the ground turkey.

I really liked that Garten's recipe included fresh mozzarella cheese.

So many lasagnas lean on grated or shredded mozzarella, so slicing up a fresh log was a nice touch.

Garten's cheese-laden lasagna was a dairy lover's dream.

The goat cheese gave that layer some extra tang and flavor, and the fresh mozzarella provided layers of thick, cheesy goodness that made for a great cheese pull.

De Laurentiis' classic Italian lasagna made me question the standard recipe I've been following for years.

I'm used to ground meat, cheeses, and tomato sauce. But De Laurentiis' recipe requires 20 ounces of frozen spinach and a mixture of white béchamel sauce and homemade tomato sauce.

De Laurentiis' method puzzled me, but who am I to argue with a master of Italian cuisine?

I made a béchamel sauce and a standard tomato sauce to assemble the chef's lasagna and stirred the two together.

De Laurentiis also said to keep the ground beef separate, layering it into the dish on its own.

Before assembling, I followed the instructions and stirred together three large eggs and 1 ½ pounds of ricotta cheese.

I'm not a fan of a lasagna that's heavy on the egg flavor, but her recipe wasn't overly eggy in the end.

De Laurentiis' recipe had a lot of spinach, and there wasn't much seasoning to add flavor.

The spinach was my least favorite ingredient in any of the lasagna recipes, and I'm usually a big fan of the leafy green.

De Laurentiis' lasagna disappointed me, mostly because it wasn't very flavorful.

I don't think the many steps of the complicated recipe paid off in the end.

Drummond, better known as The Pioneer Woman, doesn't mess around with protein-filled meals.

Her simple lasagna recipe calls for 2 pounds of ground beef and a pound of hot breakfast sausage.

The chef also included cottage cheese instead of traditional ricotta and tons of fresh herbs, such as basil and parsley.

I eat a high-protein diet, so I was immediately drawn to Drummond's meat-heavy lasagna sauce.

Like Garten, Drummond's recipe relies on canned tomatoes and tomato paste to make up the rest of the sauce, along with lots of chopped, fresh herbs.

Cottage cheese is a staple for meeting my daily protein goals, but I'd never had it in lasagna.

Drummond completely did away with traditional ricotta, and in the end, I enjoyed the flavor the cottage cheese brought to the meal.

My son, the picky eater, didn't even notice the switch.

Tossing 3 pounds of meat into a lasagna felt like overkill, but I ended up loving it.

Lasagna can be carb- and dairy-heavy, so I liked how protein-packed Drummond's version was.

Drummond's meaty lasagna was my favorite.

I would make her recipe again — it just might replace the family recipe I always default to.

Drummond's lasagna was perfectly cheesy and flavorful, had the right ratio of sauce to noodles, and was incredibly simple to assemble.

Best of all, it was a hit with my entire family.

This story was originally published on December 21, 2023, and most recently updated on December 24, 2024.

To whip up this delicious dish, you'll need:

• Dried tagliatelle pasta
• Sausages (Ramsay recommends fennel or Sicilian)
• Tomatoes
• Half an onion
• A few cloves of garlic

If you can't find tagliatelle at your local supermarket, pappardelle always makes for a great substitute.

One of the best parts about this dish is that there's barely any prep. It takes me about five minutes or less to prepare everything before I start cooking.

While Italian parsley isn't part of Ramsay's recipe, I love adding it if I have any lying around. The herb brightens all the flavors and brings a bit of freshness and color to the dish.

One thing I love about this dish is how easily it can be adapted to your preferences — and what you can find in the supermarket. On this night, I used cocktail tomatoes, which have a juiciness that works great in the Bolognese sauce.

You need to peel the casings from the sausages before crumbling the meat. Ramsay recommends slicing each sausage down the middle to help remove the skin.

To avoid burning the onions, I let them cook for a few minutes before adding the garlic and parsley.

Ramsay recommends letting the garlic and onions "sweat until they're soft" before you add the meat.

Don't forget to sprinkle some salt and pepper on top!

The first two times my dad and I made this dish, we thought the sauce was a little dry with just the chopped tomatoes. Tagliatelle and pappardelle noodles are perfect vehicles for thick sauces; they almost seem a little naked without one.

Since we already loved the taste of the pasta, we didn't want to change the recipe drastically. The extra can of crushed tomatoes gives the Bolognese sauce a bit more oomph in taste and texture but still stays true to Ramsay's flavor profile.

My method is always to catch one of the pappardelle ribbons in a ladle, run it over some cold water for a few seconds, and then bite into it to see how firm the noodle is.

I picked up this trick from Ramsay, who notes that the starch from the pasta water helps to thicken the sauce and make it stick to the noodles.

After ensuring the noodles are coated with the sauce, I'll throw some parsley on top.

There's just something about this dish that reminds me of my favorite little Italian restaurant in New York City's West Village neighborhood. The sauce is meaty and rich, the flavors are complex, and each bite floods me with comfort.

My parents have made Ramsay's 15-minute tagliatelle pasta almost every week since we first tried it years ago. My dad loves how much flavor the sausage adds to the Bolognese sauce, and my mom said she always feels "warm inside" when she eats this dish.

"It feels like home," she told me.

Though I was intrigued by Classico's use of Cabernet, the sauce just didn't feel right on pasta.

Out of the jar, the sauce was completely smooth, so it was probably pureed and strained before canning.

When I tasted the sauce, I thought it had a strong sweetness that didn't pair well with pasta. I also prefer some texture in my pasta sauce, so this was too smooth for me.

Because of its sweetness and texture, I think Classico's marinara might work better on pizza. 

Unfortunately, I thought the Newman's Own marinara sauce didn't stack up in the flavor department compared to the others.

The sauce fell a little flat and had what I thought was an uninspiring, smooth, and almost watery texture.

Since the texture of the Newman's Own sauce was so watery, it didn't cling to the noodles very well.

However, I also saw a tomato-basil sauce from the brand when I was at the store, and that may have more promise. 

The most expensive marinara I tried came from Primal Kitchen, which was made with avocado oil rather than the Italian standard, olive oil. To me, the addition of avocado oil in itself wasn't necessarily a benefit or worth paying more for.

When I poured some sauce into a bowl, I noticed it was quite chunky and thick with small pieces of diced onion and lots of herbs.

Despite my initial opinions about the avocado oil, the sauce was tasty. I think the avocado oil gave the marinara a richer, heartier flavor than the other sauces, which tasted brighter and more acidic in comparison.

The oregano and basil flavors were also prominent in this marinara.

When I tried Barilla's marinara, which says it has "no sugar added," I was surprised by how tasty it was.

The texture was looser than some of the other sauces, with visible specks of herbs and onion and some larger chunks of tomato.

I could certainly taste the basil and oregano but it wasn't overpowering the entire dish.

It separated a bit in the jar but came back together when stirred. 

The difference between Rao's Sensitive marinara and the regular one is that the former is made without onion or garlic. 

Out of the jar, the sauce was mostly smooth with a nice amount of larger crushed tomato pieces.

Rao's marinara had a slightly smoky flavor, perhaps from roasting the tomatoes. The concentrated-tomato flavor really was the most prominent taste in this jar, which I appreciated.

Rao's marinara had the flavor of a homemade sauce that had been simmering all day long. 

This story was originally published on October 4, 2022, and most recently updated on December 3, 2024.