Cruising Instagram on a slow day here at Chez J, I came across a post by Giada de Laurentiis. Not a fan of or follower of her, it just showed up. But it started out with the finished product, a sheet pan lasagna, and I have to say it looked awfully good--the pitch was, "if you like the crusty edges...." Say no more, that's definitely me.
How she made it: she cooked broken or cut up lasagna noodles, drained them, and mixed them with a jar of sauce and some crumbled Italian sausage. I believe a handful of grated parm went in there too. Separately she mixed ricotta with wilted spinach. The noodle mixture went into a sheet pan which I'm sure was at least treated with cooking spray though she didn't mention it, then dolloped spoonfuls of the ricotta mixture in about 12 places on top, 3 x 4. More parm, and into the oven it went. Not generally a fan of shortcut recipes but this one, for the purpose of increasing crusty edge bits had me salivating. I'd probably be inclined to put 60% of the pasta layer in, scoop the ricotta about, and then fill in between the ricotta dollops with the remaining pasta. I'd also use less sauce than she indicated in the video--hers had so much it was almost soupy. I'd rather drizzle more on after the bake. But I understand, her shtick is that one layer is so easy--it is, but it's hardly harder to do as I just described and get what I think would be a better result. Anyway, definitely worth trying.