How To Fix Runny Homemade Lasagna Sauce

Traditional lasagna checks all the boxes for a delicious meal. It's ooey-gooey due to the decadent cheese, savory and filling thanks to the ground beef, and the noodle layers are just so satisfying to cut through. While lasagna can be a bit labor-intensive to make from scratch, the payoff is fantastic (and so are the leftovers). However, you might end up dismayed if you pull your lasagna out of the oven and start to cut into it only to see runny sauce spill out. Surely, there's a fix for this?

For starters, don't cut into your lasagna straight out of the oven — it needs to rest for a good 15 to 30 minutes first. Lasagna can be a bit of a bubbling hot mess when it first comes out. (In one case, it was so hot a woman sued a restaurant over it.) Freshly baked lasagna needs time to cool down — though not completely, as we aren't going to have you eating cold lasagna — so that the cheese, noodles, and especially the sauce can set slightly before serving.

If you let your lasagna rest for 30 minutes and the sauce is still pretty runny, don't fret. While that particular lasagna couldn't be saved (hopefully, it was still tasty), you can always do better next time. For example, if you use no-boil lasagna sheets, these will actually suck up some of the sauce and other liquids while the lasagna cooks, leading to a thicker, more satisfying consistency. To avoid your meal becoming dry when using pre-cooked lasagna sheets, make sure you cover every square inch of the noodles with sauce before putting it in the oven. (If you only have uncooked noodles, give Ina Garten's noodle-soaking method a try, and just steep the sheets in hot water to soften.)

If you're making your sauce from scratch (instead of jazzing up jarred sauce), you can cook it for longer on the stove to help it reduce and get rid of any soupy tendencies. You could also stir in some tomato paste to thicken the sauce up, while also adding a boost of concentrated tomato flavor. Or, you might make a cornstarch slurry and drizzle it in, a little bit at a time, until you reach your sauce's desired thickness.