How NYC's Best Lasagna is Made

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Hi, I am Taylor Falco,

chef de cuisine here at Rolo's here in New York City.

Today, we're gonna make our version of the perfect lasagna.

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What makes Rolo's great is we cook a large portion

of our menu in our wood fire oven

and we are featured on the Bib Gourmand list

from the Michelin Guide.

This is in no way what you are expecting a lasagna

to kind of look like.

It is based off of a version of a lasagna from Bologna,

but with our spin on it.

Our favorite part is the crispy edges all around the top,

although the inside of the lasagna has a ooey, gooey

bechamel and a bolognese sauce.

The crispy top that is baked at a super high heat

adds a little bit of texture.

Making our lasagna, it starts with making bolognese,

which means we need to grind beef.

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Bolognese is a meat sauce.

It has a lot of complexity, acid,

sweetness, rich caramelization.

Got our beef that I'm just gonna cube up small enough

to go into the grinder.

You're likely gonna be finding something at a grocery store

in 80/20 or 85/15 percentage.

What we're shooting for is a 75% lean meat with 25% fat.

So we want our bolognese to be much richer.

The reason that we like to take the long way is control.

We're gonna grind our spices with the meat

so that as we're in the cooking process, everything is kind

of blooming together while we're grounding our meat.

I've got black pepper, onion powder,

garlic powder, and nutmeg.

One of the benefits of having this grinder in house

is producing a really evenly ground mirepoix.

Mirepoix is gonna be your onion, your carrot, your celery.

We're actually gonna use the mirepoix

to almost clean out the grinder so that we're getting all

of the pieces of beef that we're kind of like in there

and potentially stuck and kind of flushed out

with the rest of the mirepoix.

Although we could chop this by hand

or you could put it into a food processor,

our ability to have the grinder here ready to go

actually makes for a really great consistent qualities.

Now we're gonna head upstairs and cook bolognese.

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If you've already kind of measured out all

of your ingredients, something you could do is actually

just line them up in the order that the recipe states

so that in the moment you can very quickly turn around

and know exactly what needs to go next.

First thing we're gonna do is brown our beef.

So I've got the pan getting nice and hot.

I'm gonna add in a little bit of oil.

We're really waiting for the fond to build.

So the fond is what happens at the bottom

of your pan when things start to stick.

Incredibly flavorful 'cause it's caramelization coming

from the beef and the spices.

So we are intentionally trying to create lots

of browning on the beef and also on the bottom of the pan.

We've gotten to a point where all the fat has rendered

and kind of started to rise to the top of the pot.

And so what I'm gonna do now is remove the ground beef

from the pan and then we're gonna go in with our vegetables.

And there's quite a lot of that beef fat in here.

The water that is in the vegetables is naturally going

to seep out in the cooking process,

kind of stripping the bottom of the pan of that fond.

Add in our tomato paste, which is going

to encourage some more browning and fond building

at the bottom of the pan.

We've gotten the amount of color that I'm looking for

and so we're gonna deglaze with our wine.

We like to use white wine for this recipe.

The jumpy acidity coming from the white wine

is a little bit better for what we're looking for.

We've got our brown beef, all the fat going in there,

heavy cream,

crushed tomatoes.

Gonna add some sweetness, some acidity.

Once it comes up to a simmer, you're just gonna want

to turn that down to a very low temperature.

This is gonna sit here for about 90 minutes now.

To finish our sauce,

a little bit of a splash of red wine vinegar.

It's gonna add a little bit of acidity.

Next we're gonna take brandy.

It's gonna add some sweetness,

and then we have raw garlic.

Because we're microplaning this, it's going to kind of puree

and almost disappear into the sauce.

Season to taste with salt.

When you're tasting something and you're doing it over

and over and over again, you can use your stirring implement

and then kind of drop it over your tasting spoon,

take a bite and then if you need to go back in,

you're not having to add your used spoon into the sauce.

Nailed it.

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The two flowers that we need

for our spinach dough are double zero caputo flour,

finely ground flour, usually common in pastas and pizzas,

as well as semolina, which is going to add

some toothsomeness to the bite of the pasta.

Bring everything into our pastry room

and then we'll start assembling.

So let's talk about spinach pasta.

We are gonna blend spinach and eggs together.

Ends up making a really beautiful bright green dough.

We are kind of basing this recipe off

of traditional lasagna from Bologna.

All of the lasagna that is made

in that region has a bright green spinach dough.

I have to start blending it.

We wanna do this pretty quickly because

we don't want the spinach to get hot and lose its color

and we don't want the eggs to get hot

and potentially scramble.

Now we're gonna mix our dough together.

We're gonna turn this on for a little bit

before I actually add in the liquid ingredients

because I want the semola, the salt,

and the caputo to evenly distribute.

Turn this on for the next 18 to 20 minutes.

We'll come back and check on the dough.

Everything is very evenly green.

We're looking for a strong dough.

If it weren't strong,

when I go to kind of like squeeze the dough,

it might fall apart.

It all feels like it's got some nice spring to it.

Knead these into one or two nice dough balls.

You're trying to get all the air bubbles out,

and so using your body weight

to compress everything together.

We're gonna get it to a nice tight ball like this

and then wrap it well, make sure it's nice and tight.

We want it to fully hydrate,

so there is a lot of liquid in this dough.

By letting it sit all together, it will equalize

and kind of become one well rested and hydrated dough.

We're gonna let this rest overnight.

I have a dough that I made yesterday

and now we're gonna start working with it.

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Our pasta machine is like the Ferrari of pasta machines,

so the amount of lasagna dough that we're actually kneading

and sheeting each week is quite a bit

and it's able to kind of keep up with all that work.

Sheeting pasta by hand is very fun.

This machine makes it a lot easier. It's more consistent.

I'm just gonna start compressing the dough down

as much as I can.

There's absolutely no shortcuts at this part,

not for weak wrists.

So we've got our dough.

There we go. Turning the pasta machine on.

Dough in, and this is the first time

that we gonna do lamination.

Fold the pasta into quarters

so that now we have a nice flat edge.

And then we're gonna use our rolling pin

to get this thin enough to be able to go

through the pasta machine.

Reason we want to do this a few times is just to make sure

that it has the mouth feel that we want

and the strength of the dough that we want.

Take a little bit of flour.

It's just gonna help the pasta

from sticking to the workbench.

And then we're gonna be cutting our lasagna sheets.

Each one of these is gonna be one half of the lasagna,

so we want about six by nine inches.

We bother using a ruler 'cause we wanna make sure

that each portion is exactly the same.

We're gonna blanch the lasagna sheets.

Basically what we're doing is quickly cooking them

just not all the way through.

The lasagna takes about two minutes

in our wood fire oven, sometimes less.

Being able to blanch the lasagna sheets

ahead of time is actually one of the reasons

that we can speed up that process.

To my side, I have ice water .

The ice water is gonna basically stop the cooking process

so that we don't overcook the pasta.

30 seconds or so, and we're going to start taking it out.

We wanna make sure that we're moving it around,

trying to make sure that the pasta isn't sticking to itself.

Take the lasagna sheet, drain the excess water off of it.

And then I'm gonna put a little bit of olive oil

on this half sheet tray,

just so that it's not sticking to the parchment.

And lay flat our lasagna sheet.

Add a little bit of olive oil on top of them.

Since we need both sides of this to be oiled up,

we're just gonna give this a press

and then actually switch it and the residual olive oil

that's stuck to the lasagna will keep it from sticking.

Now we're gonna make the bechamel.

Equal parts flour and butter.

I want to get that into the pot first

because I want it to pretty slowly melt.

The bechamel is really creamy, it has a great texture to it.

I don't want to get any caramelization

or accidentally brown the butter.

I have exactly the same amount of grams

of butter in all purpose flour.

I'm gonna pretty quickly add in

and then I just want to mix this until it starts

to become one cohesive paste.

As the pan and the butter start to heat up,

it starts to become a little bit more slick

and actually come away from the pan.

Slowly start to stream in our milk little by little

until we can get a really smooth paste at first

and then add in the rest of the milk

so that we have a really creamy, silky smooth sauce.

We're gonna bring this up to a boil.

I'm just gonna cut some onions.

The thinner or the smaller that the slice or the cut is,

the more prominent it will be in the sauce.

Slowly poaching the onions, release a little bit

of their mild kind of sweet flavor into the sauce.

While this is working, we're also gonna add a little bit

of nutmeg, is to add some warm baking spice flavors

or notes to the lasagna as a whole.

Just gonna add a little bit of salt.

We're just gonna quickly kind of pass that

through a fine mesh sieve.

Strip out any of the onions, add some salt.

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We put the lasagna into our hotel pans.

We're gonna take bechamel

and squeeze out a decent amount on each one.

Using a piping bag is a little bit

more efficient than using a spoon.

We want to make sure that we're keeping a gap

between the edge of the lasagna and the bechamel

because as the bolognese, the bechamel

and the Parmesan start to melt,

they're actually going to creep towards the edges.

Two pretty generous scoops of Parmesan.

It's an 18-month age Parmesan.

We find that it melts exactly the way

that we want and the high heat.

And we're gonna just take our last sheet

and put that right on top.

Just being careful not to rip them.

And then just give it a little bit of a press

so everything kind of comes together.

And then peel this layer of our parchment.

Rinse and repeat the same thing over and over and over

until we have about eight lasagnas per tin.

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The size of our lasagna actually makes

for a really quick cooking process.

We have our preheated sizzle pan,

take some canola oil and just kind of lightly grease the pan

all over so that when we add in our lasagna,

it does not stick.

We think that the best part of any lasagna is the top kind

of crispy, crunchy, cheesy part.

The key is you want to kind of scrunch up the lasagna

and kind of create these peaks and valleys.

So by kind of folding everything in together,

we feel like we get all the best parts of the lasagna.

And pop it right into the oven.

I'm just gonna move it into our hotspot.

In the meantime, we can take one of our plates

and kind of start to preheat that.

We wanna make sure that all the food that's going out

to our guests is served really nice and hot.

At home, if you have one of those cast iron flat tops

and you can pre-bake it in the oven so that

by the time you actually dropped your homemade lasagna

onto it, it is as close as to what you're gonna get here.

But if you don't have an oven that is burning at

sometimes north of 750 degrees,

it's gonna be damn near impossible to recreate.

We're gonna pull our lasagna out and you can see that

we've gotten all the kind of crispy edges.

To finish our lasagna, some fresh Parmesan

and layer that on top.

Some Maldon salt, Sicilian olive oil,

and then a decent dusting of nutmeg over the whole dish.

And then we're just gonna slide this on

and then kind of come from the backside

and just lightly take it off the tray.

This is our lasagna.

For me, I like to kind of cut into the center,

save the edges for last, but you can also kind

of see all the ooey gooeyness of the inside

of the bechamel and the bolognese.

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I think that the top has a really great crunchiness to it

from the charred bits.

The bechamel is really creamy.

The bolognese has a lot of complexity to the sauce,

acid, sweetness, rich caramelization.

So in one bite it's really quite delicious.

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