Spare Spoons Kitchen
The Weeknight Kitchen · no-boil noodles · make-ahead friendly

Easy Vegetable Lasagna

A real lasagna with almost no work — no-boil noodles, jarred marinara, frozen spinach, canned mushrooms, and two cheeses. Layer it up, cover it tight, and the oven does everything. Feeds a crowd and freezes perfectly.

20 min to assemble 45 min covered + 15 min uncovered bake 15 min rest (don't skip)
Spoon cost
Effort ●●○○○ Time ●●○○○ Some Doing
Vegetarian
Servingsamounts scale to match
8
Units

Ingredients

Add water to the jar — no-boil noodles will steal all the moisture from the sauce. Stir ½ cup of water into the marinara before you layer. Skip this and the center noodles come out stiff and underdone. Also: cover the pan tightly with foil for the first 45 minutes so the steam stays in and finishes the job.

Easier, if you like

  • Barilla Oven-Ready Lasagne (green box, pasta aisle, about $3) is the right no-boil choice — don't substitute regular dried noodles without boiling them first.
  • Birds Eye Steamfresh Chopped Spinach (frozen-vegetable aisle) comes in 10 oz bags — microwave per the bag, then squeeze dry when cool enough to handle.
  • Polly-O Whole Milk Shredded Mozzarella (refrigerated cheese section, 8 oz bag) melts smoothly; grab two bags for this recipe.

Method

    Cook's notes

    Squeeze the spinach really dry. Wet spinach is the main reason vegetable lasagna comes out watery. Squeeze until it looks almost crumbly.

    Fresh mushrooms instead of canned: use 8 oz of pre-sliced Baby Bella mushrooms (produce section). Sauté them in a dry skillet over medium-high for 5–7 minutes until all the liquid cooks off and they start to brown, then add to the layers. Skip this step and they'll release water into the lasagna.

    Cover tightly. No-boil noodles hydrate from the steam inside the pan. A loose cover or an uncovered bake will give you underdone noodles — if you see steam escaping, crimp the foil tighter.

    Rest before cutting. 15 minutes seems long when the lasagna is sitting there looking ready, but the layers collapse into a pile if you cut it too soon.

    Makes excellent leftovers — refrigerates 4 days, reheats well covered (350°F, 20 min), and freezes in individual portions for up to 3 months.

    Vegetarian as written; easy to make gluten-free

    Gluten-free: use Barilla Gluten-Free Lasagne (yellow box, same pasta aisle) — they're also oven-ready and work the same way. Double-check the marinara label (Rao's is GF; most jarred sauces are).

    White lasagna variation: swap the marinara for two jars (15 oz each) of Bertolli Creamy Alfredo (pasta-sauce aisle) and skip the added water — Alfredo is already thin enough. Keep the spinach and mushrooms; add a pinch of nutmeg to the ricotta filling. Richer and completely different.

    Garden vegetable variation: replace the spinach and mushrooms with one 12 oz bag of Birds Eye Steamfresh Broccoli Cuts (frozen aisle) plus one 10 oz bag of Birds Eye Riced Cauliflower — steam both, squeeze any excess liquid, and layer as above. Hides vegetables better, feeds picky eaters.

    Dairy: this one is hard to make dairy-free — ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan are structural. Skip it unless you have a reliable dairy-free ricotta you already like.