Lasagna Soup — Twenty Years of This Kitchen

March 2025. Spring and the crocuses and the beginning of a year I can feel gathering toward something. Gary's fifty-first birthday this month — I made his favorite, which changes year to year, and this year he asked for a proper French onion soup, deeply caramelized, hours in the making, real broth from beef bones I'd been saving, the bread and gruyere browned under the broiler until just right. He ate it at the kitchen counter standing up, which is how you eat French onion soup if you're Gary Larson and you've been waiting for it.

We've been married twenty years this year. Our anniversary is in July and we haven't planned anything specific yet, which is unlike me, but I think this year I want the celebration to be what we've built rather than a destination or a restaurant. Twenty years of this kitchen. Twenty years of feeding this family. Twenty years of the Friday walks that broke, resumed, became foundational. Twenty years of the grief we survived together and the love we tended back to something better than what we started with.

I don't need a dinner reservation for that. I need the people. I need the kitchen. I need the Friday walk where I'll tell him what I've been thinking about what those twenty years were.

Third book. I've been thinking about it. The one I called "something else entirely" when I couldn't say it aloud yet. Now I can: a book about family and food as the medium of family. How you feed people and how that's love and how love persists through the kitchen long after other forms of it falter. I'll talk to Susan this month.

Gary’s French onion soup took most of a day and every bit of it was worth it — but the soup I find myself making for a crowd, for a table full of people, for the kind of gathering I’m already imagining for July, is this lasagna soup: all the warmth and depth of a long-cooked meal without the hours of standing over a pot. It’s the kind of recipe that belongs to twenty years of feeding a family, the kind of thing you make when you want the kitchen to do the talking. I’ll be making a big pot of this in July, for the people who made those twenty years what they were.

Lasagna Soup

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 1 lb Italian sausage, sweet or hot, casings removed
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
• 4 cups beef broth
• 2 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 8 lasagna noodles, broken into roughly 2-inch pieces
• 1 cup whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn, for serving
• Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving

Instructions

1. Brown the sausage. In a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, cook the sausage, breaking it into small pieces with a wooden spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Drain excess fat if needed, leaving about 1 tablespoon in the pot.
2. Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, about 4–5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more, until fragrant.
3. Build the broth. Stir in the crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes with their juices, beef broth, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, and a generous pinch of salt and pepper. Raise heat and bring to a boil.
4. Cook the noodles. Add the broken lasagna noodles directly to the pot. Reduce heat to a steady simmer and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until noodles are tender, about 15–18 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.
5. Prepare the ricotta topping. In a small bowl, stir together the ricotta with a pinch of salt and pepper. Set aside.
6. Serve. Ladle the soup into bowls. Top each serving with a generous spoonful of ricotta, a handful of shredded mozzarella, torn fresh basil, and a dusting of Parmesan. Serve immediately with crusty bread alongside.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 490 | Protein: 29g | Fat: 24g | Carbs: 40g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 920mg