Just Roll and Bake: The Smart, Budget-Friendly Alternative to Lasagna Everyone Is Trying

When it comes to choosing what type of dinner to make this time, some might opt for Italian lasagna that usually fits the entire family’s taste.

However, preparing it will likely become something you won’t want to repeat every week, so here’s a quick and cheap version of the famous dish — just wrap meat in flatbread and bake those rolls for a while to get an easy and hearty dinner you’ll definitely want to repeat.

Ingredients: 600 g of minced chicken, 260 g of thin flatbread (3 pieces), 500 g of chopped tomatoes in their own juice, 160 g of bell peppers, 120 g of onions, 80 g of hard cheese, two tablespoons of tomato paste, 2–4 cloves of garlic, 1 teaspoon of khmeli-suneli, ½ teaspoon of ground paprika, ½ teaspoon of salt.

Peel and chop the onion into pieces, then place it in a blender bowl fitted with a blade attachment. Blend the onion until smooth. Place the ground chicken in a deep bowl and add the blended onion, suneli hops, paprika, and salt. Mix well.

Heat a dry skillet, add the ground chicken, and cook over medium heat, covered, for 10–15 minutes. Stir the mixture occasionally to break up any clumps. Then remove the skillet from the heat.

Remove the stem and seeds from the bell pepper and dice it into small cubes. Peel the garlic, press it through a garlic press, or grate it on a fine grater. In a separate pan, heat the tomatoes with their juice. Add the garlic and bell pepper. Stir, cover, and simmer for about 10 minutes. After that time, add the tomato paste, stir, and cook for another minute or two.

Grate the cheese on a coarse grater and divide it into four portions. Add half of the tomato sauce to the browned ground meat and mix. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Spread half of the remaining sauce on the bottom of a baking dish.

Now prepare the flatbread sheets: trim them to fit the dish. Leaving a small border around the edges, spread one-third of the ground meat mixture onto a sheet of flatbread and sprinkle with one-fourth of the cheese. Fold the edges of the flatbread from opposite sides and roll it up. Place the roll in the baking dish with the seam side down. Repeat this process with the remaining ground meat and cheese to form more rolls, and place them in the dish as well.

Spread the remaining tomato sauce over the rolls, then place them in an oven preheated to 180°C for 20 minutes. Once the time is up, remove the baking dish and sprinkle the remaining cheese over the rolls. Place the baking dish back in the oven for 5 minutes, until the cheese melts.