The Cheesiest Gluten-Free Vegan Lasagna!

Alright, I'll admit. This is a total cheater meal. I made absolutely nothing from scratch. But sometimes, a little convenience food is what a girl needs. A few weeks back, Follow Your Heart sent me samples of their Vegan Gourmet Shreds. I'd tried them before, but these are made using a new formula.

I made vegan waffle tacos with the cheddar, and I'm still sittin' on the fiesta blend. But that mozzarella simply HAD to go in a lasagna. It's been so long since I've made lasagna at home! I typically make a homemade tofu ricotta, and sometimes when I'm feeling really crazy, I'll make a homemade sauce. But not this time.

Despite the fact that I used all cheater ingredients, I think this is the best lasagna I've ever made.

The Follow Your Heart Mozzarella was so damn melty. Just look at it all oozing out. I made a huge batch, and I tried to take pics of multiple slices but this is the best I could do. There's no nice way to photograph a lasagna. In fact, if your vegan lasagna actually looks pretty in a pic, you're not using the right cheese. It needs to look like melty goodness.

Also inside is Tofutti Ricotta Cheese! My dad ordered this for me from Vegan Essentials. It was my first time trying this instead of tofu ricotta, and wow. Just wow. When sampled straight out of the tub, it's a little dry and weird-tasting. But that's because this stuff is better cooked. Way better. It melts too, so that plus the FYH made for one very cheesy, dairy-free lasagna.

I used a jarred sauce (Whole Foods 365 Organic Eggplant Marinara) and gluten-free lasagna (Tinkyada Brown Rice Lasagna) and fresh spinach as well. Everything — the noodles, the cheeses, the sauce — are gluten-free. Now I have no problem with gluten, but I like to avoid white pasta. And the only non-white lasagna noodles at Whole Foods were the brown rice kind. Plus, I love the texture of brown rice pasta! It's kinda chewy. These cheeses were just accidentally gluten-free.

Anyway, though I've long been a diehard Daiya advocate, I'd say FYH is really catching up and giving Daiya a run for their money. The earlier version of the FYH shreds were a little chalky, but this new formula seems more on par with the FYH block cheese, which has always been quite tasty. I still think the shreds taste better melted than eaten straight from the bag. But they're definitely tastier and meltier than before.

By the way, I'm not posting a recipe because it's so simple, that'd be silly. But here are the basics: Boil your lasagna noodles. Pre-heat the oven to 350. Pour a little marinara in the bottom of a 9x13 casserole dish. Add a layer of noodles, a layer of ricotta, a layer of mozzarella, a layer of sauce, and a layer of spinach. Repeat and finish with a layer of noodles. Top with more sauce and more mozzarella. Bake for about 45 minutes, adding foil over the top during the last 15 minutes of cooking. That helps the top layer of mozzarella melt.