Throughout my foods course, I try to expose my students to a variety of global dishes. While lasagna is a well known dish, few of my studenst have actually prepared it from scratch. So, in addition to my pasta unit and my casserole unit, I taught them “All About Lasgna!” Read on to learn how!
Set
- As students were walking into my room, I had the Lasagna song by Weird Al playing in the background. I asked students what they thought our food topic was going to be. I got a lot of smiles and few eye rolls, but most thought it a fun song and correctly guessed that we would be working with lasagna! Hey, in these teaching times, you gotta do strange things to get them interested!
Materials
- iPads or Lap Tops
- Projector & Screen
- Lab Ingredients
- Loaf Pans (affiliate link)
Activities
- Students complete the All About Lasagna assignment using provided links.
- Afterwards, I show them an awesome YouTube video called “4 Levels of Lasagna: Amateur to Food Scientist” by Epicurious so students can see variations of lasagna recipes presented by cooks with varying levels of experience. Students also learn some food science about the ingredients, dish and cooking process.
- Students are then ready to review their recipe and answer some pre-lab questions so they know what they are doing on the day of the lab.
- I broke this lab into two days due to my class periods being 43 minutes long. The first day, students prepare the lasagna and bake it. I remove it and store it overnight in the refrigerator. You don’t have to bake it the first day, but I think lasagna tastes better after a second baking. On the second day, I pop the lasagna’s in the oven to reheat. Students remove the lasagna from the oven and while it rests, they prepare garlic bread. By the time the bread is ready, so is the lasagna. Since this is a small batch, it easily feeds 4-6 students with minimal leftovers.
Attachments
- All About Lasagna (please make a copy)
- Small Batch Lasagna & Garlic Bread Recipe & Pre-Lab Questions (please make a copy)
- NOTE: I will no longer be putting answer keys on the website as students have been trying to access them!
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