This Italian Sausage and Kale Lasagna is the best kind of comfort food, packed with fresh kale, creamy ricotta and flavorful sausage!
When it comes to making dinner, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes your disastrous cannelloni turns into an amazing lasagna. Sometimes recipes don’t go as planned, but you’ve just gotta roll with it.
Today is Secret Recipe Club reveal day! The Secret Recipe Club is a group of food bloggers. Once a month, we are given a blog assignment from which we must choose a recipe to cook and blog about. Everyone posts their recipe on reveal day (today!).
This month, I was assigned the blog A Day in the Life on the Farm, a blog by Wendy who is a retired police officer who moved to the country with her hubby to start a little homestead. It sounds like Wendy and I have a lot in common– she loves cooking, entertaining, reading and travel. But our hubbies have even MORE in common– scuba, hiking, guns and flying planes. Two peas in a pod!
Wendy has SO much great food on her blog! I was really tempted by her Caramel Apple Pretzels (big soft, sweet pretzels– yum!), but I figured I should stick to dinner. I was torn between a few things, including her Mediterranean Baked Chicken and Mexican Chicken Lasagna. Since I have so, so much kale in the garden, I decided to try the Italian Sausage and Kale Cannelloni.
Wendy’s cannelloni look so perfect and awesome. Mine… did not work out so well. I think it had to do with the brand of lasagna sheets I bought (Barilla). When I took them out of the box, they definitely didn’t look wide enough to be able to roll them into cannelloni.
I decided to boil them a bit as instructed, thinking they might expand a little. No such luck, and they really weren’t even pliable enough to roll even if they had been big enough.
Never fear! What do cannelloni and lasagna have in common? All the same ingredients… in a different shape. So instead of rolling, I layered. And hot dang did it turn out well.
This lasagna rocked! The flavor of the kale really came through which was nice since it was a star garden ingredient. And this was huge! We ate it for a full week.
Definitely a winner, and definitely proves that even if you think a recipe isn’t going to work out, all if not necessarily lost. You just need to be a little creative.
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large onion, diced
- 1 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
- 1 bunch kale, stems removed, steamed and chopped
- 32 oz ricotta cheese
- 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 6 eggs
- 1 tsp dried Italian herbs
- Salt & pepper, to taste
- 1 package oven ready lasagna sheets
- 1½ jars marinara sauce
- Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the Italian sausage, breaking it up in the pan, and continue to cook until the meat is cooked through. Drain excess grease and set aside to cool.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl mix together the ricotta, Parmesan, eggs, kale and Italian herbs. Season with salt & pepper. Stir in the sausage and onions.
- Spread about a cup of sauce on the bottom of an 9 x 13-inch pan. Place a layer of noodles over top. Spread a layer of ricotta mixture over the noodles, then a layer of sauce. Repeat layers until ingredients are gone, ending with a layer of noodles topped with marinara sauce. Sprinkle additional Parmesan on top, if desired.
- Cover pan tightly with foil, and bake 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 10 minutes until lasagna is bubbling and top is lightly browned. Let stand 10 minutes before cutting.
Sounds like it worked out well! I’m not sure where to find the right sized pasta for cannelloni! Nice save, and it sounds amazing. I’m jealous that you have kale in your garden!
YESSSS please! What a FABULOUS recipe and it has all my favourite ingredients in it too! Karen
Great way to change up the recipe at the last minute. This lasagna looks amazing. I love eating veggies like this in the winter because let’s face a cold salad is just not appealing when it is freezing outside. Happy Reveal Day!!
Agreed!! I’m trying to pack kale into everything.. it’s so easy to sneak into things!
I love Barilla no-boil noodles for lasagna though. They’re my go-to.
I’ll have to try kale next time, I always use spinach in my lasagnas.
They were pretty awesome in the lasagna… so much less work!
Ha, it lasted a whole week? I’m kinda jealous. With 4 kids, that would be one meal for us 🙂 Especially since it looks amazing!
Lol!! It was huge!! It would definitely feed six of you, easy!
This recipe sounds great. I think I’d love it as lasagna, too!
Hey, life gives you a lemon, make lemonade, right? I think your production turned out great, and I bet it tasted wonderful!
that’s what counts!
Thanks for the nice write up Jess. Too bad you and hubby don’t live closer…we could hang out. Glad you enjoyed the recipe and you are right the only difference between lasagna and canneloni is the shape.
Yum, still looks delicious! I will definitely have to try it.
This looks seriously amazing, Jess!!! I love it!! And a great save – lasagna and cannelloni have the exact same ingredients.
This lasagna looks wonderful with all that kale and ricotta! I have yet to add kale to lasagna and I can’t wait to try it. 🙂
I make a similar lasagna, but have been using spinach. So smart to do kale! Can’t wait to give your version a try!
I love your creativity + positive attitude. =) When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and when life gives you fussy cannelloni you make lasagna! =) It still looks amazing!
Exactly!! Haha! Thanks, Amy!
Regardless of how the final product turns out, these flavors sound amazing together. Your lasagna looks absolutely delicious!! Great job 🙂
This looks amazing! Kudos to you for making the best of a potential kitchen disaster!
To make cannelloni, I often find I have to roll my own pasta in order to get noodles that are wide enough. Just stopping in from Group C to tell you how wonderful this looks, especially with spinach and Italian sausage.
Thanks, Stephanie!! I need to try making my own pasta– something I haven’t done yet!
Don’t you love when something turns out even better? I love lasagna and this looks so perfect. Love that you added kale to this too, such a great idea! Pinned!
This is such an awesome combination! I’ll take lasagna any way I can get it!
Nice, swapping out the traditional spinach for kale!
I’ll take lasagna whether its cannelloni, regular lasagna sheets or roll ups. All is good in my book. Last week i made a batch with spinach and was planning on making some again next week. I think I’m trying it with kale. 🙂
I really want a big slab of this right now! All those flavors sound amazing!
I love the way you improvised and think it looks delicious! The kale and sausage sound fantastic!
You have me craving lasagna now! I’ve made a kale lasagna before and loved it even more than I thought I would, and yours looks so good with the kale and sausage! I love that it’s got lots of ricotta cheese – the cheesier the better when it comes to lasagna, I say!
It was awesome! I’m thinking the kale and sausage combo would be really good with a white sauce, too, so I might try that!
Your secret dish recipes always look so good! I’m loving this creative twist on lasagna, Jess! Such a great idea to add in some sausage and kale. Sounds delicious!
It was so good! I’m adding kale to literally everything these days. I added kale to my hubby’s chili last night LOL… he wasn’t so sure about that one. 😛
Such a delicious combination and I can so go for a big slice of this cheesy lasagna!! Yumm!
Thanks, Ami! It was delicious!
Haha, I love it when a fail turns into something so much better!! I don’t make lasagna nearly enough but it is one of my favorites! I love that you added kale too! This looks so delicious 🙂
It’s one of my faves, too. Such great comfort food!
This looks absolutely amazing! I love those gorgeous bright colours, and I love your creativity as well! Do you think you could ship some to me by any chance? 😉
Love your creative tweak when it didn’t come out exactly as you planned. Great SRC pick this month! (Sorry it took me so long to get here to comment.)