Healthy Turkey Lasagne
This healthy turkey lasagne is unexpectedly good!!! The addition of spinach to the white sauce is different but yum.
Ingredients
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 2 carrots peeled and finely diced
- 3 onions finely chopped
- 2 celery stalks finely diced
- 2 peppers any colour, chopped
- 500g lean turkey mince
- 2 tbsp tomato purée
- 400g tin chopped tomatoes
- 1 bay leaf
- 125g /3 sheets of fresh lasagne see Notes below
- 65g parmesan split into 35g and 30g
- 15g butter
- 20g plain flour
- 300ml semi skimmed milk
- 180g bag spinach roughly chopped
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4.
- Heat the olive oil in a large pan or casserole dish, and fry the carrot, onion, celery and peppers for 15 minutes over a medium heat until they are very soft and starting to caramelise.
- Add the mince and fry until brown all over.
- Add the tomato purée and stir into the mince, then add the chopped tomatoes with half a tin of water and the bay leaf. Bring to the boil and then simmer on a low heat for 30 minutes until the sauce is thick. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Remove the bay leaf!
- To make the white sauce, melt the butter on a medium to low heat in a medium saucepan and then add the flour and cook for one minute.
- Stirring continually, add the milk gradually until completely incorporated and there are no lumps (I like to use a wooden spurtle).
- Turn the heat to low and add 35g parmesan and stir until melted into the sauce.
- Stir the spinach though the sauce, and simmer until it wilts. Season with some freshly ground black pepper.
- Put half of the tomato sauce in a large baking dish (I used a square Pampered Chef stoneware dish – dimensions: 24cm x 24cm x 5cm deep), and cover with one and half of the fresh lasagne sheets.
- Layer the rest of the sauce on top and the finish with the other one and a half fresh lasagne sheets. Pour over the white sauce, and scatter with the remaining 30g of parmesan.
- Bake for one hour or until the sauce is bubbling and the top is golden. Cover with foil if it’s getting too dark – I topped ours with foil for the last 15 minutes.
Notes
- I had bought a packet of fresh egg lasagne sheets from Asda thinking I’d need the whole lot for the recipe. I guess the dimensions and depth of the dish will dictate how many sheets you actually need, but I only needed 3, with 2 of them being cut in half. Obviously you can used dried lasagne sheets – you’ll probably need a few more (8-10) as they are generally narrower than the fresh sheets.
- This recipe serves 6 for lunch or 4 for an evening meal. Serve with a salad on the side or if you’re feeling a bit ‘naughty’ because it’s a healthy lasagne have some reduced fat garlic bread slices instead/as well – we like these ones from Asda