The Secret Ingredient for the Best-Ever Lasagna, According to Tony Bennett (and His Mom)

Tony Bennett was an iconic singer, known for his smooth voice and timeless style. He gained fame in the 1950s with hits like "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" and over the years he earned numerous awards, including 19 Grammy Awards. Bennett performed well into his 90s, but he sadly passed away on July 21, 2023, leaving a lasting legacy.

Recently, I was looking for some comfort food recipes and ran across an interview Bennett did with Taste of Home in 2020 where he shared his mother's lasagna recipe. According to the music legend, his family would gather at his mother's home "every Sunday for a meal."

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"The reason they always came was to support my mother after my father passed away tragically when I was 10 years old," he said, adding that they always had a "full Italian meal—from antipasto to soup to pasta (al dente, of course) with tomato sauce."

You would think with a history like that Bennett would enjoy cooking, but he didn't.

"I don’t really cook. I think it is because I have spent most of my life on the road, eating in hotels and restaurants," he said at the time, but he added that his wife was a great cook and that his favorite food was—you guessed it—Italian food!

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Bennett said that his mother was also a wonderful cook.

“Her lasagna was a family favorite and she always made it when the family gathered at our home on holidays or big family occasions," he said. It was so popular, it was served at his 85th birthday gala.

"It was like having my mom with us that evening," he said.

I love a good family recipe, and this one looks divine. You can find the full recipe and interview in the Taste of Home article, but when I was looking through the recipe I noticed a secret ingredient: cinnamon!

The spice isn't a traditional addition to lasagna, but cinnamon does find its way into other pasta dishes, like Greek pastitsio and Cincinnati chili. The warm spice adds a depth of flavor to the sauce and plays well with both the beef and tomatoes. There's only 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon in the recipe, so we promise your baked pasta won't taste like cinnamon rolls.

In addition to the cinnamon, you'll also need ground beef, Italian sausage, onions, garlic, plum tomatoes, Italian puree, tomato paste, fresh basil, salt, pepper, lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, Pecorino Romano and eggs.

This isn't a quick recipe to make, but it's not difficult, either. If it's good enough for Tony, we suspect it's good enough for us. We're looking forward to trying it this holiday season when we have friends and family over. We'll definitely pair it with a Tony Bennett soundtrack in his honor.

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