
When it comes to lasagna I am like Garfield, I can easily devour the entire thing single-handedly and will give the angry stare to anyone who approaches me during this process. Joking aside though, I love lasagna, and I mean, who doesn’t? It’s the perfect comfort food, and served with a nice side salad (or any other compatible side-dish) it can be eaten during the weekdays or as a festive dish. Making a vegan lasagna is not hard at all either. You can use normal lasagna noodles/plates/sheets. Just make sure that they are egg-free (if you want to be strict).

If you have your own vegan bolognese recipe, good for you! Then you only need to prepare the bechamel sauce, assemble and bake. Now, for those of you who don’t have a vegan bolognese recipe in hand, I can really recommend this one I do here. You can serve this with pasta as well, but I especially like it in lasagna. The “meaty” base comes from chickpeas which are mashed gently with a potato-stomp. Chickpeas are a great way to increase your intake of fibre, calcium, iron, phosphate, magnesium, zinc and vitamin K.

Prepare your vegan lasagna

Rinse the chickpeas, save the chickpea water (also known as aquafaba) it’s great for baking and works as an egg-replacer, then mash them gently with a potato-stomp or a fork.

Set the chickpeas aside, and continue with dicing the onion and garlic. Bring out a large saucepan and heat up the olive oil and start to saute the onion and garlic for a couple of minutes until the onion is soft and starts to be a little bit translucent.

Add the chickpea mash and continue to saute for another 3 minutes before adding the crushed tomatoes. Bring the sauce to a boil, lower the heat and add the spices, liquid aminos, nutritional yeast and let simmer for about 20 minutes.

While the sauce is simmering, preheat the oven to 220 °C / 430 °F / Gas Mark 7, and bring out a small saucepan. It’s time to start preparing the bechamel sauce.

Start out by melting the butter and then add the flour while you whisk the mixture, creating a somewhat smooth dough. Continue to whisk while you pour in the soy milk and whisk until the flour and butter mixture is dissolved. Add the spices and continue to stir. After a while, the sauce will thicken and once it’s a little bit looser than you want it, remove it from the heat, as it will stiffen a little bit when it cools off.

Now that you have your chickpea filling and bechamel sauce ready it is high time for you to start assembling your vegan lasagna. Start out by taking out your oven safe form. Add a little bit of bechamel sauce to the bottom of the form and then place some lasagna noodles on top. I found a brand that makes sheets that fits my form precisely, otherwise, you can just break them up so that you cover the area of the form. Add some chickpea filling and then top it off with more bechamel sauce. Lay out another layer of lasagna noodles and repeat this process for as many layers as you want. I made two layers. When you’re finished you add the last bit of bechamel sauce you have to the top layer and sprinkle some (optional) vegan cheese on top. Bake the lasagna in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Serve the vegan lasagna with some salad on the side!