By Kathleen Purvis;| McClatchy/Tribune - MCT Informat
Q: Can I make lasagna a week ahead of time? Or could I make it a day ahead, refrigerate it and bake it the next day?
A: If you assemble and bake the lasagna ahead of time, you shouldn’t keep it longer than three days in the refrigerator. If you need to keep it longer, it would be better to freeze it and reheat it.
If you just need to make it a day ahead, you could refrigerate it before baking it. But you need to make sure it cools quickly when you refrigerate. So if it has a cooked meat sauce, you’d need to make that and cool it before assembling the lasagna and refrigerating. The assembled dish will chill more quickly that way.
It can be risky to put together perishable food when some parts of a dish are warm and others aren’t. That can keep the dish in the danger zone, above 40 degrees and below 140 degrees, for long enough to allow bacteria to grow.
Email questions about food and cooking to Kathleen Purvis, kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com.
