Lasagna is a dish best served on its own. It contains a creamy and dense red sauce, soft pasta layerings, and the most appetizing ingredient, melted cheese. You can make it vegetarian or with beef. So while there are different ways of cooking lasagna, what goes with lasagna?
It’s common to have your personal lasagna recipe that only you know how to make at home. And it tastes delicious with all those secret ingredients you put into making it. But don’t you think it’ll be better to eat lasagna along with something else?
Here’s where I’m going to give you all of the options. The best appetizing dishes you can eat with lasagna and are perfectly appropriate to serve.
What to Serve Lasagna (That Is Not A Salad)
Serving lasagna with garlic bread or salad is a common sight. It’s a delicious and pleasant combo for a single person’s dinner or an entire family’s. But, surely, that’s not all you can do with lasagna, right?
These are a few incredible options. They are light, easy to make, and most of all, so delicious that you won’t get enough in just one serving!
1. Garlic & Lemon Soup
You can easily pair the cheesy and saucy lasagna with a rich and creamy garlic lemon soup. And this works on many levels. For starters, it’s so easy to make. If you want to reduce the heat with regards to dairy products since lasagna is loaded with cheese, you can switch to vegan milk for the soup.
Garlic and lemon soup is sweet, slightly sour because of the lemon, and the herbs and green onions give it a rich and zesty flavor. Ideal for every table that has lasagna on it.
2. Sauteed Mushrooms (With Other Veggies)
You can easily sautee all types of vegetables like mushrooms, green beans, carrots, broccoli, etc. A little bit of seasoning with dried herbs and they caramelize and lightly brown to perfection.
My perfect pairing with lasagna is sauteed mushrooms. Especially when I’m preparing vegetarian lasagna, the mushrooms add the meaty flavor that I need to complete my dish.
Sauteeing mushrooms for the first time? Start out with something simple. Make sure you cut the mushroom pieces in similar sizes and do not overcrowd the pan while sauteing.
For extra flavor, you can also add chopped garlic and some butter for extracting a richer and meatier flavor from mushrooms. And a personal tip would be to wait until the end of the sauteeing to season the mushrooms with salt.
3. Baked Cauliflower
If you have dual racks in your oven, baking lasagna and another dish is a possibility. Making a vegetable bake with cauliflower is super easy and simple. Wash and clean the cauliflower and coat it with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and bread crumbs for a crispy-on-the-outside and soft-on-the-inside texture.
A dish like baked cauliflower has many benefits. For starters, it’s nutritious and healthy. It brings out an appetizing flavor to lasagna. After baking the cauliflower you can do either one of these things: use a fork and gently mash the cooked vegetable meat so it tastes something like baked mashed potatoes. Or add some parmesan cheese and butter to get a richer and creamier coating.
4. Roasted Vegetables (With Vinegar)
Balsamic vinegar is a great savory ingredient used for bringing out the roasted flavor vegetables when you cook it on the pan. It enhances the flavor and texture of root vegetables like onions and potatoes.
If you can’t use the oven for baking vegetables, roast them on a grill pan with a dash of balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Add some fresh parsley towards the end for a fresh and rich taste.
Roasted and grilled vegetables pair perfectly with meaty and cheesy dishes such as beef lasagna or parmesan roast chicken.
5. Bruschetta
Bruschetta is a blend of both garlic bread and salad. You can add a variety of ingredients on top of bruschetta bread with a garlic butter sauce that brings it all in together. The most tried-and-tested Bruschetta recipe is tomatoes on toast with cottage cheese, fresh basil, and a light garlic-butter dressing.
6. Wedge Salad
An iceberg wedge is crispy, savory, and delicious. It’s a salad that uses an entire iceberg wedge with beans, pickled onions, chopped tomatoes, crumbled bacon, and other similar ingredients.
You can even top a wedge salad with a creamy, nutty dressing made from cashew nuts, garlic, olive oil!
7. Salads
Salads are definitely the cream of the crop when you talk about pairing different dishes with lasagna. But you can do a lot more than the same dinner salad recipe you make every time. Try making new and exciting salads at home with fresh ingredients like figs, kale, apple, spinach, pomegranate, cucumber, fennel, orange, and lots more.
You can make delicious salad dressings as well to go with the salad so your meal doesn’t taste too dry. A homemade citrus vinaigrette or yogurt or tahini or cashew dressing goes a long way to improve the texture and flavor of your salad.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for delicious recipes to make alongside lasagna, you’ve come to the right place. These interesting dishes are a treat for the tastebuds as well as the eyes and nose. And they pair perfectly with an Italian dish like lasagna.
Lasagna pairs well with savory and light flavors. In my personal experience, I prefer using garlic in most of these recipes because there’s very little garlic flavor in my lasagnas. I skip using cheese for these side dishes because that’s one thing my lasagna has the most of!
If you’re tempted to add more butter to your garlic bread or sauteed or grilled veggies, you can use unsalted butter as it is more nutritious, and frankly, more delicious.