This post is by blog team member, Kelly. To learn more about Kelly, check out our team page!
Summer is officially here! While I love to cook for my family, this time of year it can be a challenge to drag myself into the kitchen while everyone else is outside playing and enjoying the beautiful weather. Enter the make-ahead, one-dish dinner!
Credit for this recipe goes to my good friend and co-worker, Ruth. We first had this dish about seven years ago when we were pregnant with our second child and moving into our new home. Ruth brought a pan over, we popped it into the oven, set up our dining room table, and sat down to eat with boxes all around us.
Since then we’ve had a third child and moved to another new home…but we still have fond memories of that crazy moving day, and that first meal in our new home. We got the recipe from her way back then, and it’s been a part of our regular meal rotation ever since!
Why do we love Baha Vegetarian Lasagna so much?
- It’s a one-dish meal that comes together quickly thanks to mostly canned and frozen ingredients. Eating real food doesn’t always have to mean spending hours in the kitchen cooking everything from scratch!
- You can make this recipe and bake it right away, or keep it in the fridge and cook it later.
- It works well for feeding a large crowd because you can easily double the recipe and make two pans at once.
- The leftovers taste great! In fact, like traditional lasagna, it might even be better the second time! My husband likes to have a piece for breakfast with a fried egg on top! The leftovers also freeze well.
- It’s naturally both gluten-free and vegetarian.
Serve this with your favorite Mexican food garnishes such as cilantro, green onions, avocado, sour cream, salsa, etc. Sometimes we serve the lasagna over a pile of greens with sautéed bell peppers or zucchini and onions. And we like to finish this meal with red grapes for dessert.
So next time you’re looking for an easy one-dish dinner or just craving Mexican food, give Baha Vegetarian Lasagna a try!
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Baha Vegetarian Lasagna
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
Description
A one-dish real food meal that comes together quickly thanks to mostly canned and frozen ingredients!
Ingredients
Lasagna:
- 6–8 corn tortillas (we recommend sprouted corn tortillas)
- 1 15- ounce can black beans
- 1 15- ounce can white kidney beans
- 2 14.5- ounce cans diced tomatoes with green chilies
- 10– ounces frozen corn (fresh would work too!)
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 3 cups cheddar cheese (freshly shredded)
Optional garnishes/add-on’s:
- shredded lettuce or other greens (sautéed bell peppers, zucchini or onions, fresh tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, sour cream, avocado, etc!)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Rinse and drain beans.
- Combine beans, tomatoes with chilies, corn, chili powder and cumin in a saucepan and simmer over low-medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Shred cheese and prepare any garnishes that you’d like to use.
- In a 7×11 glass baking dish, layer corn tortillas, 1/3 of the bean mixture and 1/3 of the cheese. Repeat for a total of three layers.
- Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.
- Let sit for 10 minutes and enjoy!
Notes
We recommend organic ingredients whenever possible.
Look for sprouted corn tortillas in the freezer section of your food co-op or traditional grocery store. Place them in the fridge overnight to defrost them before using.
Any brand of canned tomatoes and beans will work, but to avoid BPA (Bisphenol A – a chemical that mimics estrogen and disrupts the endocrine system), I like to choose cans labeled BPA Free.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Category: Dinner
- Cuisine: Mexican
Kelly Harjes is a Certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of Appetite for Healthy Change™. Her mission is to inspire others to look and feel their best, feed their families well, and help improve our food system.
Kitchen Tips and Resources from Bruce:
- We recommend sprouted corn tortillas. Food for Life sprouted corn tortillas are available at Whole Foods and most food co-ops.
- I use Crate and Barrel’s everyday casserole dishes to cook up my lasagna. They come in all different sizes, they’re plenty deep (no spilling over), and they look great when you’re serving guests!
- An effortless shredder for the grated cheese in this recipe is a super kitchen tool to have on hand! I love this super microplane coarse cheese grater. It makes grating a cup of cheese so quick and easy that you might not even miss the convenience of those pre-shredded cheeses which are usually coated with things like wood fibers/cellulose to keep the cheese from clumping in the bag.
- A great kitchen spatula helps serve up slices of this wonderful vegetarian lasagna. Although most spatulas can do the job, I love my OXO Good Grips Silicone Turner that’s available on Amazon and a bunch of different retailers.
2 Responses
What a great recipe. We’ve made it a several times now, and the whole family loves this. We call it Mexican Lasagna, and the kids don’t even notice it’s vegetarian. WIN!
Now that we’ve made it a 3 or 4 times now, I thought I’d share how we’ve customized it. To add a little more flavor I chop up about 1-1/2 cups onions and mince 2-3 cloves of garlic. I cook these in a little oil before adding in the beans, etc. Also, we usually have the 16 oz. packages of frozen bi-color super sweet organic corn from Whole Foods in our freezer. We just add the whole 16 ounce package, and it works great!
Definitely give this recipe a try. It’s a 5 star winner for sure!
I’m so glad your family enjoys this, j! Your additions to the recipe sound great. Thanks for commenting and sharing how you customize it!