Lauren's Cabbage & Bean ‘Lazy Lasagne’

Lauren’s Cabbage & Bean ‘Lazy Lasagne’

Lauren Leyva

Featuring:

Cabbage

Pulses

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Ingredients:

2 garlic cloves

1 onion

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

Half a savoy cabbage

2 tbsp tomato puree

2 tbsp tomato ketchup

1.5 tsp dried mixed herbs

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 carton of passata

1 tin of butter beans (& the liquid)

1 tin of cannellini beans (& the liquid)

4-6 lasagne sheets (or parpadelle pasta)

2 vegetable stock cubes

125g ball of mozzarella

Handful of fresh parsley (garnish)

Olive oil

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C Fan.
Finely chop or crush the garlic cloves. Finely dice the carrot, onion and celery. Roughly chop the cabbage.
In a large ovenproof frying pan or skillet, heat a glug of olive oil and add the carrots, celery and onion with a splash of water. Sweat over low-medium for 5 minutes until softened. Add the cabbage and sweat for another 3 minutes. Add a splash of water if the pan dries out.
Add the tomato puree, tomato ketchup, mixed herbs, chopped tomatoes, passata, stock pots and 200ml boiled water. Season well with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.
Break up the lasagne sheets into rough quarters. Add the butter beans, cannellini beans and broken lasagne sheet pieces into the pan, ensuring the pasta is submerged, adding a little more water is needed.
Cover with a lid and cook in the oven for 20 mins, until the pasta is cooked.
Tear or slice the mozzarella ball into 5-7 pieces. Place the mozzarella pieces over the dish and place back in the oven until the mozzarella has melted.
Let the lasagne sit for 5 minutes. Then sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley and enjoy!

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Lauren Leyva

Lauren Leyva is a multi-award-winning home cook, creator (200k+) & presenter. In early 2026, Lauren launched her 'Cooking With Lauren' YouTube cookalong series, designed to make learning to cook and bake at home more accessible for children. Lauren has already won multiple awards, including 'Thought Leadership Tastemaker Award', 'Top Woman to Watch' and 'Nottingham University Alumni Award' - further cementing her reputation as a rising voice & authority within the food & family spaces.

www.laurenleyva.com/

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