If Italian food is your thing and you are on a low sodium diet, you are probably missing lasagna. If that’s sounds like you, you will love this recipe with its hearty sauce, sausage, and cheese.
Typically filled with salty meats, sauce and cheese, lasagna can definitively be a challenge for the low sodium diet. But having tried some really great low sodium marinara sauces, I knew it was just a matter of getting the balance of flavors right.
I started with a recipe for a really really great sauce from Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low Sodium Cookbook. The sauce I use is her Chunky Red Tomato Sauce, which packs a ton of flavor for very little sodium. From there, I made a “sausage” by mixing herbs with unseasoned ground pork. And then I add two cheeses – ricotta and mozzarella.
Simply Lasagna (Low Sodium!)
NUTRITIONAL COUNT:
190.4 mg sodium per serving.
342.7 mg potassium per serving
181.0 mg phosphorus per serving
Ingredients
Sauce:
- 4 cups no salt added tomato sauce ((we love Pomi))
- 3 small (or 2 large) cloves garlic ((minced))
- 2 medium carrots ((chopped))
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 8 ounces mushrooms ((diced))
- 1/4 red onion ((minced))
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1/4 t fennel seed
- 1/4 t nutmeg
- 1 t dried basil
- 1 t dried oregano
- 2 t red wine vinegar
Sausage:
- 1 lb unseasoned ground pork
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- ½ tsp dried sage
- 1 tsp fennel seed
- ½ tsp oregano
- Black pepper ((to taste))
Assembly:
- 12 ounces oven-ready lasagna noodles
- 2 cups part skim ricotta
- 8 oz mozzarella*
Instructions
Sauce:
- Combine the tomato sauce, carrots, and minced garlic in a blender and puree until smooth.
- In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the tomato sauce puree, the spices, and the red wine vinegar to the saucepan. Simmer over low heat for about 10-15 minutes.
Sausage:
- Combine the unseasoned ground pork with the spices (I use my hands). Cook the sausage in a skillet over medium heat until cooked through.
Assembly:
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Prepare a 9”x13” baking pan by spraying it with nonstick cooking spray.
- Spread about ¼ to ½ cup sauce in the bottom of the prepared pan (it does not need to be spread evenly). Create the first layer by placing noodles evenly across the bottom of the pan; top the noodles with ricotta, sausage, and sauce. Repeat one more more time, reserving about 1 cup sauce and 4-5 noodles for the top layer (you should use all the ricotta and sausage in these two base layers).
- For the top, add a layer of noodles, spread with the remaining sauce, and top with all of the mozzarella. Cover and bake for about 30 minutes. Uncover and bake another 15 minutes or until the lasagna is heated through and the cheese is browned.
Notes
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION – Yield: 12 servings. 181 m phosphorus per serving.
* We use Kraft shredded mozzarella, with 150 mg sodium per 1-ounce serving.
Super delicious. The sauce is amazing.
★★★★★
To many different spices for me. I am not that good of a cook. Sounds like it is delicious.
There are definitely a lot of spices. If you have a jarred low sodium red sauce that you like, you can always try that instead of the sauce in this recipe. That would make this recipe quite a bit easier. I know that Eden has an unsalted red sauce (https://www.edenfoods.com/store/spaghetti-sauce-no-salt-added-organic-amber-glass-jar.html), and so does Walnut Acres (http://www.walnutacres.com/product_view.php?id=10&cat=sauce).
If you use fresh mozzarella, you can drop the sodium even more. It has 50 mg/oz.
True! We use fresh mozzarella pretty often. For this lasagna, we opted for the saltier version because we like the extra flavor it brings. But you are correct, if your diet won’t support that extra sodium or you prefer fresh, it should work great.
That’s what I did too. I used daisy ricotta. Less sodium also.
This looks super yummy! Is dry curd cottage cheese the same as Farmers cheese? Having a lot of trouble finding the dry stuff. Thank you!
No, farmer’s cheese is not the same as dry curd cottage cheese. I believe farmer’s cheese is about 120 mg sodium per ounce, where dry curd is 30 mg per cup. If you can’t find dry curd cottage cheese, you can use ricotta in its place. I have had great luck using ricotta. You will need to do the math using the sodium in your specific ricotta, but if you were to use ricotta with 55 mg sodium per serving, with 7.5 servings per container (like a 16 ounce container of great value brand ricotta), the total sodium in the ricotta would be 412.5 mg. When you subtract the sodium from the dry curd cottage cheese (135 mg), that means you are adding a total of 277.5 mg sodium to the whole pan. That would mean that each serving would have about 166 mg sodium.
So if I wanted to freeze this recipe I could instead of baking it. Just freeze after putting on the mozzarella?
Yup that’s usually what I do. I’ve also skipped adding the mozzarella until the day I’m baking it, but I prefer having it all assembled before I freeze it so that it’s ready to go.
What is the bake time for frozen?
I’m not sure. I haven’t made this in a while, but I’d try cooking it on very low for at least an hour.
Made the low sodium lasagne last night for dinner and went by your recipe. It was Awesome. Made the sausage and sauce. Thank You so much. Just couldn’t find the dry curd. The ricotta worked very well. 2-23-2021.++
So glad you liked it! I’ve had trouble finding the dry curd lately too, unfortunately. I’ll need to update the recipe to reflect ricotta nutrition at some point.
Thanks for the recipe. I was looking for something low sodium and this was perfect. This was amazing and pretty easy. I used ground turkey instead of pork. Yum!
★★★★★
This recipe is fantastic. I recently was diagnosed with CKD stage 3. I had a craving for lasagna, but no idea how to make it without salt. When I stumbled upon your blog I was so excited to find this delicious recipe. My husband loved it. It is definitely a keeper. Thank you for the variety of recipes. I can’t wait to try them.
★★★★★
This looks great. Is there a substitute for red wine vinegar that I could use in the sauce?
I haven’t tested it without the red wine vinegar, so I can’t be sure. You could replace it with another subtle vinegar (rice wine or white wine), or try omitting it.
Tried and love this recipe but it was a little confusing when a tablespoon vs teaspoon should be used.
I made the recipe assuming the “t” by itself was tablespoon but the Fennel and nutmeg in the sauce say to use 1/4 t. Is that supposed to be 1/4 tablespoon?
Wondering the same!
The small “t” is teaspoon. If I get back to the blog one of these days, I’ll fix it so it’s consistent!