Italian Sausage Lasagna With Spinach & Bechamel Sauce

The colder months are the perfect time to experiment with different types of lasagna. Warm, comforting, and nourishing, lasagna is the kind of dish that makes winter feel a little cozier. And once you make it, it becomes the gift in your fridge that keeps on giving—especially if, like me, you always make a double or even triple batch.

If you’re looking for a new lasagna recipe to add to your rotation, I highly recommend this Italian sausage lasagna with spinach and béchamel sauce. It’s a fresh twist on the authentic Italian lasagna I shared last year—one that so many of you loved.

The method is almost the same, but the flavor feels more distinctive. Even better, you can easily customize it by choosing your favorite type of Italian sausage—regular, sweet, or spicy.

Let me show you how to make it.

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Types Of Sausage For Sausage Lasagna

“What type of sausage do I use?” 

This is likely the number one question you’ll have when you decide to make a sausage lasagna.

The answer depends on what’s available in your local stores, but you can also make your own sausage mix, by picking the flavor profile you prefer.

Either way, I think we should start by looking at the most popular types of Italian sausages.

Most Popular Italian Sausage Types

Every region has its own signature sausage. Many of them are raw, while others are cured and classified as salami. I’ll focus on the raw sausages that can be used for making lasagna.

1. Norcia Sausage – made with 100% pork meat (usually shoulder and bacon), salt, black pepper, garlic, and white wine. It has a clean peppery and slightly garlic flavor, perfect if you want a delicate sausage ragù.
   
2. Tuscan Sausage – made with pork meat, mostly shoulder and bacon, with the addition of garlic, salt, black pepper, and wild fennel herb.
   
3. Luganega from the Veneto region – again this is made with pork meat (the lean meat and a fat component), salt, garlic and pepper. The meat is usually from the neck plus they use guanciale to make it,  which makes it less fatty than the Norcia sausage. 
   
4. Sicilian Sausage – This is the leanest of them all, mainly because we like to eat it raw or grill it. But because of its unique flavor profile it can make a very interesting addition to your sausage lasagna. It’s made with 80% shoulder meat and 20% pancetta. Sometimes, they even use the thigh, which is the part of the meat used for prosciutto. To that you add garlic, wild fennel seeds, fresh parsley, black pepper, white wine, and salt.
   
5. Red Sausage from Calabria – this is the spicy one, but it’s a sweet kind of spicy. This is again made with pork meat, using the shoulder, the fat, and the thigh. However, the fat content in this one is higher than in the Sicilian sausage. The other ingredients are sweet chilli pepper, regular peperoncino, and salt of course.

For all of these, the casing is an essential ingredient to make the regular sausage shape. However, if you want to get inspired by the ingredients of any of the above sausages and make your own mix for this lasagna, you can make it without casing. Let me show you how to do it.

How To Make A Simple Sicilian Sausage Mix At Home

To give you an idea of the ratio of each ingredient, I will share the recipe for Sicilian sausage.

• 500 gr ground pork
• 2 gr black pepper
• 10 gr coarse salt
• 5 gr wild fennel seeds
• 50 ml white wine
• ⅓ cup fresh parsley minced
• Optional 3 garlic cloves minced

All you have to do is mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, and massage your meat with clean hands for a few minutes, so they all spread evenly. Then cover the bowl and refrigerate for one day, or at least overnight. This will allow the meat to get the aroma from all the other ingredients.

If you choose to make this yourself, you can use this recipe to make your sausage sauce following my recipe below. You can also tweak this recipe to make a ground pork mix that looks more similar to the Tuscan sausage or the Calabrian one.

Italian Sausage Lasagna Ingredients

Let me talk you through the necessary ingredients you’ll need to bring this dish to life, and why each one is so important.

The soffritto ingredients – As most classic recipes, this sausage lasagna starts off with a soffritto. For that, you’ll need onions, carrots and celery. This will create the aromatic base for your sausage ragu.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil – You’ll need this to make your soffritto and give that signature Italian taste to your lasagna sauce.

Red Wine – Your wine can make or break your lasagna, so I suggest using the best you can afford. My favorite choice is Chianti.

Tomato Passata – Like the wine, how good your tomato sauce is can affect the entire taste of your lasagna sauce and the final lasagna dish. I like this Italian food brand because it has various options that are all tasty, but for this recipe you’ll need a basic passata with no extra flavor added.

Italian Sausages – Here they are, the true stars of our recipe. I suggest you try finding a true Italian sausage, and check the ingredients, because Italy has so many different regional sausages. Some will have fennel, others might have a mix of herbs, there will be very spicy ones, and a few might also come with cheese. I suggest avoiding anything with cheese.

Since sausage is simply the combination of ground pork, or mix of pork and beef, don’t worry if you can’t find Italian sausages at your local store. You can make the mix yourself. Scroll back up and read my section that explains the different types of Italian sausages and the ingredients included. I have given you a basic recipe too.

Stock – I always like to use vegetable stock, but feel free to use a beef stock, to give your lasagna a stronger meaty flavor.

Water – Depending on your type of stock, you might need extra water or not.

Salt and Pepper – These are essential for seasoning, but you want to be mindful about how salty or spicy your sausage already is, and use them sparingly, or even skip them.

Bay Leaves – I love the taste bay leaves give to the finished ragu, but if you don’t like them, you can omit them.

Extra Herbs – Feel free to add any extra herbs you like, especially if it’s already in your sausage. Make sure you are not adding too many flavors, though, as that can make the final lasagna sauce too chaotic and just imbalanced.

Lasagna sheets – If you can find them, I suggest using spinach lasagna sheets for your Italian sausage lasagna. It switches things up from the classic lasagna, and it also perfectly complements our next ingredient.

Baby Spinach Leaves – I am layering my lasagna dish with spinach leaves, to add more goodness and also because spinach and sausage goes so well together.

Bechamel Sauce – If you want to make yours homemade you can find the full recipe with the ingredients and the steps here. 

Parmesan and Pecorino Cheeses – For this lasagna, I suggest using either pecorino alone, or a mix of pecorino and parmesan. The pecorino will give the final dish a bolder flavor profile. However, if your sausage is already very salty or spicy (I wouldn’t suggest using a very salty sausage), you can skip pecorino cheese, as it will make it even saltier. 

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Equipment needed:

Other than those ingredients, these are the tools you will need:

• One large pot to make your ragù
• Multiple cooking spatulas and tablespoons
• A ladle
• A whisk
• Measuring cups
• An extra clean large pot for boiling the lasagna sheets (if you use Barilla lasagna sheet you don’t need to pre-boil them)
• An extra large baking dish or two medium ones
• Kitchen foil
• A knife and a serving spatula

How To Make The Sauce For Your Sausage Lasagna

The steps to make your sausage ragù are exactly the same as those for making your classic Italian lasagna, especially if you are using ready-bought Italian sausages. If you are not, you will simply have to start with making your sausage mix.  If that’s the case, scroll back up to get my Sicilian sausage recipe.

Ingredients For Your Sausage Ragù

• 4 to 6 sausages (600 gr to 1 kg – 4 for the sauce and 2 for layering, if you choose to)
• 1 carrot
• 1 onion
• 1 celery
• Italian EVOO
• one glass red wine (150 ml)
• 700 ml passata 
• 400 ml water if using a stock cube 
• 1 veg stock

Tip: Even if you don’t make your own, you can amplify the sausage flavor by adding one herb it already contains directly in the sauce.

How To Make Your Sausage Sauce

Start with pre-cutting your soffritto vegetables into small pieces.

Then sauté them in two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Keep tossing them from time to time, until they start becoming translucent.

Next, add the crumbled sausages without the casing. I suggest you try to break the pieces with a fork so they don’t clump together, unless you like that. You can do this on a plate before adding the sausages, or directly in your pot.

Don’t forget to set aside one to two sausages for layering into your lasagna.

Mix the sausages with the vegetables, and let them cook for 10 minutes, but continue mixing regularly.

It’s time to add your red wine. Once you do, give everything a mix, and let the wine reduce. All you need to do for that to happen is keep your pot on the stove with the heat on, and avoid covering it with any lids. It should take a few minutes, but keep watching it so the bottom of the pot doesn’t dry and stick.

In that time, you can go ahead and prepare your tomato passata and your stock of choice, with the extra water, if you are not using a homemade stock.

When you can see the red wine has been absorbed by the sausage and vegetables, you can add your passata and mix everything.

You can take the time to season, if you think your sauce needs it, or add the extra herb/s you decided on, although this is optional.

PS: I personally don’t season my sausage sauce, as I don’t think it needs it, but you might.

Next, add the vegetable stock and mix again. (PS: It’s also completely fine to add the tomato sauce first and then the stock).

Add your bay leaves too, and cover the pot with a lid. You can use a stopper, but be aware that the tomato sauce will bubble and splash at the beginning of the simmering, so the gap must be really narrow to avoid any messes.

You also want to lower the heat to half the strength, or nearly that much.

Leave the sauce to simmer for one hour.

If you want to intensify the flavor even further, you can come back after that hour, add more stock if needed, and leave it to simmer for another hour. I don’t think the sausage ragù needs it, so I skip this step, which means my sauce will be ready in under 90 minutes from the starting time.

Once it’s ready, let it rest for at least 30 minutes before starting layering your lasagna.

Also, don’t forget to remove and toss out the bay leaves.

Make Your Bechamel Sauce

While your Italian sausage lasagna sauce simmers, you can either set a timer and go about your day, or start preparing the bechamel sauce.

If you choose to do the latter, here’s my bechamel recipe.

Finishing Your Italian Sausage Lasagna

Gather all your ingredients — the sausage sauce, the bechamel sauce, the lasagna sheets (or use spinach lasagna pasta, if you can find it), the baby spinach, and the grated cheeses, and the extra sausages.

I always start the layering with a layer (we call it strato in Italian) of ragù, but it’s equally fine to start with the bechamel sauce at the bottom. Just do what you prefer, or try both, if you are making two dishes.

After your sauce, you want to layer your lasagna sheets. You don’t need to cook them.

Next, you can add a layer of sausage sauce, and top it with a layer of spinach leaves.

It’s time to add your bechamel sauce on top. I like to add mine into scattered dollops. That way it’s enough to add the flavor and the creaminess, but I also avoid running out.

Finally, sprinkle your cheeses – parmesan and pecorino, or pecorino alone.

Repeat the entire layering process at least two more times.

If you choose to do this, you can add some extra crumbled sausage on your second layer, right after the sausage sauce or on top of the spinach, and then again on the final layer.

Don’t worry, it’s ok to add raw sausage into your lasagna,  as long as you crumble it into fairly small pieces and let it cook for at least 40 minutes.

The other option is to lightly grill, bake, or pan cook the two extra sausages, slice them and layer them into your lasagna with the casing.

Preheat your oven for 10 to 15 minutes, and bake for 50 minutes at 180 °C or 356 °F on the bottom level of your oven.

More Tasty Italian Recipes

I trust I have answered all your questions and also gave you very important tips on making your lasagna. If you need more information, I have a complete Lasagna FAQ and Lasagna Storage section in my first lasagna recipe — the same one where you’ll find the bechamel sauce recipe. You can find all of those here.

Did you love this recipe? Please give it a heart and share it with a friend or two. 

Don’t forget you can get weekly recipes in my Italian newsletter – Buona Settimana. I send one email every Sunday, and it’s a friendly chat about Italian life, food, culture, fashion, but most importantly a way to connect directly with you. I’d love you to join.

In the meantime, you can find more delicious and traditional Italian recipes below:

My Favorite Italian Bread Recipe

My Easy Broccoli Soup Recipe

Artisan Italian Focaccia Pizza – 2 Flavors

An Authentic Green Minestrone From Genoa

Happy cooking.

A presto,
Alessia