Buffalo Chicken Lasagna

This buffalo chicken lasagna is a wing-night Frankenstein in the best way. Hot sauce, vinegar, and garlic salt turn ordinary spaghetti sauce into a buffalo-style red gravy, and a crumbled cap of blue cheese on top brings the dressing-style finish that makes wings what they are.

Diced chicken breast sautes briefly before going into the sauce, where it stews and pulls in all that pepper-sauce heat as the lasagna bakes. The ricotta cheese layer plays the cooling role that ranch or blue cheese dressing usually does on a wing platter, with egg substitute keeping it lighter and helping it set into clean slices.

Uncooked noodles go in dry, which sounds wrong but is the trick. The extra cup and a half of water in the sauce hydrates them as the casserole bakes under foil, so you skip the boiling-and-draining step entirely. The covered hour-and-ten finishes the noodles and melds the flavors, and a final five-minute uncovered blast melts the blue cheese on top.

Pro Tips

• Don’t skip the foil during the long bake. Uncovered too soon means dry noodles and a scorched top before the pasta is tender.
• Adjust the hot sauce to taste. Two tablespoons is moderate buffalo heat. Add more if you like it punchy.
• Let the lasagna rest the full 15 minutes after baking. This is when the noodles fully absorb any remaining liquid and the layers set up for clean cuts.
• Use a quality blue cheese. Mild crumbles disappear in the bake. Look for something sharp like Roquefort or Maytag.

Variations

• Swap blue cheese for crumbled gorgonzola or feta if blue cheese isn’t a household favorite.
• Use shredded rotisserie chicken instead of cooking your own to cut prep in half.
• Drizzle ranch dressing over individual servings for the full wing-platter experience.