Roasted Eggplant Lasagna with Turkey (2024)

Comfort food with a healthy twist! This Roasted Eggplant Lasagna uses sliced eggplant in place of lasagna noodles making for a delicious, hearty, low carb and gluten free dish the whole family will love!

Eggplant Lasagna – Hearty + Healthy

Meat Sauce

The meat sauce itself is fairly easy to make. It’s prepared in one large skillet and follows the same basic formula for making bolognese.

1. Heat oil over a medium-low heat and add the onion. Sauté onion for about 5-7 minutes until it’s soft and starting to turn translucent.
2. Add the garlic and cook about 1 minute until fragrant.
3. Add the turkey mince to the pan and cook about 5-10 minutes until browned and no longer pink.
4. Mix in the tomato paste, red pepper flakes and dried oregano. Cook these in with the turkey 1-2 minutes. This will give the tomato paste time to caramelise slightly making for a richer, tomato flavour.
5. Add the chopped or crushed tomatoes, sugar and remaining teaspoon salt (ignore the passata listed in the collage below).
6. Mix everything together and cook for about 15-20 minutes over a medium-high heat until you have a thick, meaty sauce. Make sure to taste and season as you see fit. Don’t be afraid to add more sea salt or black pepper as needed.

Cottage Cheese Filling

Classic lasagna recipes usually use ricotta cheese. This recipe uses cottage cheese which has a few benefits:

1. Cottage cheese has less calories and fat than ricotta making this an ideal substitute if you’re tracking caloiries.
2. Cottage cheese is typically much cheaper and easier to find making it a more accessible option.

I actually only ended up making this lasagna in the first place because I accidentally bought low fat cottage cheese instead of regular cottage cheese and didn’t know what else to do with it. It ended up working out better than I expected and made great use of what I find to be an otherwise inedible ingredient. (Why is fat free dairy so weird tasting?!)

Can I make this egg free?

Eggs help to hold the cheese mixture together so that it holds shape well when serving. It also helps make for a slightly creamier filling. If you’re intolerant to eggs you can absolutely skip the egg. Just keep in mind that it might make for a slightly more messy lasagna in the end.

Assemble

Once all of your lasagna In the end your layers will look like this:

• 1/2 cup meaty tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish
• Place eggplant slices on top (6 slices)
• Half of the cottage cheese mixture + 1/2 cup mozzarella
• 1 cup meat sauce
• Another layer of eggplant slices
• Remaining half of cottage cheese mixture + 1/2 cup mozzarella
• Remaining meat sauce, remaining 1 cup of the mozzarella cheese as the final layer

Once assembled, pop in the oven and bake uncovered (no need for aluminum foil as this will only steam and create moisture) for about 30 minutes with the oven temperature still set to 400°F/205°C.

Substitutions and Additions

• You can swap out the turkey for Italian sausage or ground beef.
• Part skim ricotta can be used instead of cottage cheese. I don’t recommend whole milk ricotta here because it tends to make for a more watery ricotta mixture.
• Add fresh spinach and mushrooms to the sauce for an even more veggie packed meal. I don’t recommend adding too many extra veggies like peppers or zucchini because that will increase the overall water content of this dish.

Leftovers & Storage

Leftover lasagna will keep well in the fridge for 4-5 days if covered and stored in an airtight container.

Leftovers can also be frozen for 2-3 months. You can freeze individual slices (ideal for easy reheating) or as a whole. To freeze: let the lasagna cool completely, then wrap up well in a freezer-safe container or plastic wrap+foil (make sure it’s airtight).