Super simple vegan lasagna. Rich tomato sauce layered with a creamy vegan bechamel sauce and spinach lasagna, this recipe is rich, cheesy and satisfying.
I was never super keen on making lasagna. In fact, this vegan lasagna that you see before you represents my first foray into lasagna making.
Which is not to say that I didn’t test the heck out of this recipe! So my first foray was really like….. four forays, or thereabouts.
The reason I never tried my hand at lasagnas until now, was they always seemed awfully complicated and long-winded endeavours. And, you know me, I like to keep it simple!
So I set out to make a super simple lasagna. The easiest vegan lasagna in the world really. No seriously!
This entire gorgeous dish is ready in 75 minutes and a fair chunk of that time is ‘hands off’.
Which, is still a fair whack of time I’ll admit, it’s not something I’m going to slap together every other night of the week, but it’s a worthwhile time investment for a dinner party or when you just want something a bit fancier on the weekends.
How to make the easiest vegan lasagna
It’s just a matter of making the absolute simplest (but fabulous) tomato sauce with loads of mushrooms and a super simple white sauce (bechamel).
Once those two sauces are done, you layer them with some oven-ready spinach lasagna sheets, top with some vegan mozzarella slices and sliced tomato, pop it in the oven for 30 minutes and dinner is ready to serve!
Serve with a gorgeous salad and some fancy bread and you have a dinner-party-worthy feast on your hands.
How many serves in this vegan lasagna?
This serves 8. So it’s ideal if you have a big family or you’re having friends over.
But even if it’s just two of you like in my house, then make it anyway!
We just eat this for lunch and dinner two days in a row. I love not having to think about what’s for dinner (or lunch) for a coupla days.
You can reheat and serve OR just eat it cold the next day (as we do). It’s amazingly good cold too.
Cheese slices on top!
I used slices of vegan cheese over the top which created a really lovely cheese layer.
I preferred this to using grated vegan cheese, because vegan cheeses often don’t spread that much when they get melty, so it can still end up looking a bit sparse unless you use a heap of it!
Whereas if you use slices you can cover the whole top and you have this gorgeous melty cheese layer.
How to make this vegan lasagna even faster!
If you wanted to save even more time on this lasagna recipe you could use a pre-made marinara sauce and forego the mushrooms.
This way you won’t even have to spend the time making that tomato/mushroom sauce or letting the excess water cook off.
Your lasagna will still be totally divine, because it’s that combination of tomato sauce/bechamel sauce that make this lasagna divine. So if you want to make it even quicker, using your favorite marinara sauce will make this really fast!
And this also works for those folks who don’t love mushrooms.
So if you’re doing it this way, you don’t even have to heat up your marinara sauce first, just make your white sauce and then start assembling your layers.
You will love this vegan lasagna for its simplicity and ease. It is also:
- Creamy
- Cheesy
- Filling
- Satisfying
- Simply delicious!
Keep leftovers covered in the fridge and enjoy over the next few days.
More Vegan Italian Recipes
- Vegan Pizza – a simple from scratch pizza base topped with tomato sauce and vegan ricotta
- Vegan Alfredo – an ultra creamy vegan take on this classic dish.
- Vegan Pesto – totally divine on pasta!
- Vegan Tiramisu – the perfect dessert!
- The Best Vegan Lasagna Recipe – we went all out on this one, it’s NOT quick like this one, but it is amazing, and made with homemade vegan bolognese.
- Vegan Mozzarella – also totally divine on our vegan pizza!
So let us know what you think of our easiest vegan lasagna in the comments and please rate the recipe too. Thanks!
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The Easiest Vegan Lasagna
Ingredients
For the Tomato Sauce:
- 8 cups White Button Mushrooms (768g)
- 2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
- 42 ounces Canned Chopped Tomato (3 cans) (1200g)
- Sea Salt and Black Pepper To Taste
For the White Sauce (Bechamel Sauce):
- 6 Tbsp Olive Oil
- 5 Tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 4 cups Soy Milk (960ml) or other non-dairy milk
- 2 tsp Dijon Mustard or other prepared yellow mustard
- Salt and Black Pepper to taste
For the Lasagna:
- Spinach Lasagna Sheets Oven Ready*
For the Topping:
- Sliced Tomato
- Vegan Cheese Slices
- Black Pepper
Instructions
- Slice the mushrooms and then add to a pot with 2 Tbsp Soy Sauce.
- Sauté the mushrooms in the soy sauce for a minute. Then cover the pot and leave on medium heat until the mushrooms have released their water.
- Then remove the lid from the pot and let some of the water cook off.
- When most of the mushroom water has cooked off, add the 3 cans of chopped tomatoes and bring to a simmer.
- Turn down the heat and allow to simmer for a few minutes and then add sea salt and black pepper to taste. It's important that your sauce isn't too thin by the time you use it, so let it cook off a bit and simmer down before you use it.
- Prepare your white sauce. Add the oil to a pot and turn to medium high. As the oil is heating, sift your flour into a bowl. When the oil is hot (but not sizzling) add the flour all at once and stirring continuously fry the flour in the oil for a bit, stirring vigorously. Then add the soy milk all at once and stir continuously until it reaches the desired thickness.
- It will usually start to thicken after it has reached boiling point. Bear in mind that the white sauce will continue to thicken after it is removed from the heat.
- When the white sauce is a nice thickness, remove from heat, and add salt, black pepper and mustard. Taste test to make sure it has enough salt/pepper.
- When both sauces are ready, pre-heat the oven to 430°F (220°C).
- Layer the tomato and white sauce with spinach lasagna noodles in an oven safe rectangular dish (9x13).
- Start with a layer of tomato sauce, then a layer of spinach lasagna, then tomato sauce followed by white sauce, then spinach lasagna and repeat. End off with a layer of white sauce on the top and finish off with a layer of vegan cheese slices (we used vegan mozzarella slices) and then finish off with sliced tomato and a sprinkle of salt and black pepper.
- Place into the oven and bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.
The layers go roughly as follows:
- Layer of Tomato Sauce
- Layer of spinach lasagna noodles
- Layer of tomato sauce
- Layer of white sauce
- Layer of spinach lasagna noodles
- Layer of tomato sauce
- Layer of white sauce
- Layer of spinach lasagna noodles
- Layer of tomato sauce
- Layer of spinach lasagna noodles
- Layer of white sauce
- Layer of vegan cheese slices
- Layer of sliced tomato
- Sprinkle of black pepper on top.
Video
Notes
- If you want to save even more time in this recipe, you can just use your favorite marinara sauce instead of making the tomato sauce from scratch. That way you can forego the mushrooms and just use the marinara sauce as is. If you choose to do it this way then you will need around 6 cups of marinara sauce.
- The 'prep time' includes cooking of the sauces, whereas the 'cook time' is only for the time spent baking the lasagna in the oven.
- Using oven-ready lasagna sheets dramatically lessens cooking time because you don't have to cook them first, they cook with everything else in the lasagna, so these are recommended.
- I used 7.5oz / 210g which was 12 sheets of spinach lasagna in this recipe, but you may use more or less depending on the size of your dish. (Update: When we made the recipe video the lasagna sheets were narrower so we used 16 sheets.)
- The white sauce is adapted from my vegan white sauce.
I see in the comments that this can be frozen, then thawed and reheated. At what temp and for how long would you recommend reheated (after being thawed overnight in the fridge, for instance)?
You can reheat at 350°F until heated through, probably 10-15 minutes.
I’m allergic to mustard so will make without. Hope it’ll be as good. Carol.
You can definitely leave out the mustard without any issues. Hope you enjoy it! 🙂
Love this recipe. I use 5 or 6 tbsp or cornflour to thicken the white sauce instead of mustard.
Very tasty, worked a treat except I needed twice as much bechemel sauce to make up the layers as described…I used a 9in X 13in dish filled to depth of 6cm.
Btw, very easy to make your own pasta sheets with 400g flour, water and 50g chopped spinach
Thanks for sharing Malcolm!
Hi could I put vegan parmesan on top, would that be after cooking? And add spinach with mushrooms, and maybe peppers? Thanx
Hi Rosie, it depends what kind of parmesan, if it’s homemade parmesan made with cashews etc that you sprinkle on top, then I would add that after. If it’s a store-bought version that might melt a bit you could add it before baking. If you want to add other veggies you can definitely do that too. 🙂
This recipe is the best, i regularly use it for a veggie vegan lasagne. However, recently ive found a vegan mince id like to use. Would this recipe work if I switched out the veggies for mince? Thanks!
Sure you can definitely use a veggie mince! So glad you like the recipe!
Hi! I want to try this recipe, two questions.
One, what vegan cheese did you use?
Two, did you have the nutritional value for the spinach sheets alone? I want to make the recipe and know that nutritional value but don’t think I’ll find the spinach sheets
Hi Alex, we used violife vegan cheese. I don’t have the nutritional info for the spinach sheets I used. However, it’s always a good idea to do your own nutritional calculation with the ingredients that you used if this is very important to you. Ours is just a best estimate.
Where can I buy spinach lasagna sheets? I have not found any…….
Hi Mel, if you can’t get hold of spinach lasagna sheets you can also use regular. 🙂
Okay wow this is for real the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten in my whole life. ????????????????
Thanks Lisa!
Definitely going to try this recipe this weekend! Would I be able to use regular lasagna noodles instead of spinach lasagna sheets?
Sure! Hope you enjoy the recipe! 🙂
I did not catch whether this lasagna used fresh spinach lasagna sheets or you used dried, uncooked? Please clarify, would love to make this for my vegan son and daughter-in-law. Sounds delicious! TIA
We used the spinach lasagna that doesn’t require pre-cooking. So you just use the noodles as is and they cook at the same time as everything else in the lasagna.
Hi! Where do you get the oven ready spinach sheets?? I’ve never seen them in any of the food stores. I’ve only seen ones made with rice.
Hi Veronica, I don’t know if any of the brands I’ve used would be relevant to you, but I got them off the shelf when living in Dubai (can’t remember brand name) and now there is a brand called Fattis and Monis that I use and it’s oven ready. I can’t give more specific help since I don’t know where you’re based. Spinach lasagna sheets don’t have to be used though, you can switch for regular lasagna sheets too. 🙂
Thank you! I’m in the US. I’ve looked in all the health food supermarkets around here and can’t find any 🙁
We’re trying to limit wheat so I was really excited for spinach ones lol
You never indicated what size pan.
Hi Sandra, 9×13 works great. 🙂
Once cooked, it can be frozen. Can I then cook straight from frozen or do I have to defrost and then cook?
Love your recipes by the way, would love to see some more meal recipes soon.
Hi Claire! So glad you’re enjoying the recipes! I would let it thaw in the fridge and then reheat in the oven. My worry is that if you cook it again from frozen it will overcook since it is already cooked so really just needs to be thawed and then heated up. All the best! 🙂