I have revamped my lasagna recipe! This easy vegan spinach lasagna is so much faster, easier, and more delicious! Win-win in my book! The prep time is only about 20 minutes and total bake time is 40 minutes. Dinner in 1 hour!

This plant-based spinach lasagna recipe is completely vegan and 100% whole food plant based. But is super yum and tasty. My tofu ricotta is full of flavor – you won’t even miss the cheese!

The sauce can make or break your vegan spinach lasagna

First of all, the most important part (besides the tofu ricotta) is the sauce. The sauce can really make or break your lasagna success. If you already have a favorite sauce you use for spaghetti, then you can go with that.

You also want a sauce that is not too chunky, so you can spread it easily.

I recommend you use a low-fat/fat free and low sodium marinara or pasta sauce to keep this super healthy. You want to read the ingredients and make sure it doesn’t have a bunch of added oil. That’s just added fat calories your hips don’t need.

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Whole Foods has a couple good brands that taste great and are fat free/lower sodium – 360 Organic Fat Free Marinara and Engine 2 Pasta Sauce. The Engine 2 is best because it is lowest in sodium and no added sugar or oil.

If you can’t find a fat free version, look for one with no more than 1 gram of fat per 50 calories and lowest sodium possible.

Vegan Tofu Ricotta is so easy to make and your omnivore friends won’t know the difference

Tofu ricotta is really easy to make and with the right spices tastes BETTER than cheese ricotta IMO.

To make tofu ricotta really smooth and creamy, use a food processor to blend it with the spices. You can do it by hand in a bowl, but it will be a little chunky. I don’t have an expensive food processor – just a cheap Hamilton Beach with 2 speeds. That’s all you need!

Make sure you choose FIRM or EXTRA FIRM tofu, NOT silken Tofu which is too soft and used more for smoothies & dressings usually. Although now I see there is a brand called Silken and they have Firm Tofu. LOL. Not confusing at all! I just used Firm Tofu when I made this.

Related Reading –

• Top 7 Superfoods for Super Immunity
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• 5 Tips to Start Eating Whole Food Plant Based
• Eat More, Lose Weight, Prevent Disease

Look for Whole Grain Lasagna Noodles

You also want to use whole grain lasagna noodles. Which unfortunately, has been harder for me to find lately! My store had a Barilla brand of lasagna noodles that had higher fiber content than the regular ones, but wasn’t completely whole grain like I usually find. So I did have to go with those for this time around. This brand has 3 grams of fiber per serving which is a little better than 1 or 2 per serving.

Whole grain pasta is much better if you can find it and usually has 6 grams of fiber per serving – DOUBLE! I did find the Barilla Whole Grain Lasagna noodles on Amazon and I may have to start ordering them, if my grocery stores aren’t going to keep their shelves stocked.

I don’t use the no-bake noodles because they are usually more processed and they don’t come in whole grain. It really doesn’t take long to boil them though and while they are boiling you can be making the Tofu Ricotta and slicing the zucchini.

After you boil your lasagna noodles

After you boil your lasagna noodles, you will want to drain them and then put them in a large dish filled with cold water. This will help them to cool off so you can handle them with your fingers AND so they won’t stick to each other and tear. Learned that from experience….

Fresh or frozen spinach?

I used fresh baby spinach right out of the bag for this recipe to save time. You can saute it before if you want, but I just let it cook in the lasagna in the oven – I did not cook it before. You can use frozen spinach, but make sure you thaw it first and squeeze out the excess moisture. Otherwise your lasagna is going to be very runny!

Related Reading –

• Tangy Spinach Hummus
• Crispy Italian Kale Chips
• Italian Cashew Creamed Kale

Vegan Spinach Lasagna Topping – no cheese needed!

Since this is a whole food plant-based (WFPB) recipe, I didn’t want to use non-dairy cheese. We don’t really like the flavor anyways. But I did want some kind of topping, so I decided to use thinly sliced zucchini and a good sprinkling of Nutritional Yeast (“nooch”) to give it a little crispy, cheesy flavor to the top.

If you aren’t familiar with Nutritional Yeast, it is NOT the same thing as Baker’s Yeast. You can find Nutritional Yeast in your spice/baking aisle at your store and sometimes in the bulk section at places like Whole Foods. It has tons of vitamins & B12 and adds a “cheesy” flavor to recipes.

My kids never even asked about the cheese. Maybe they are starting to come around! My youngest son ate 3 pieces of it and even my picky older son ate his whole serving….with a little prodding to finish the greens. LOL

How to layer your Vegan Spinach Lasagna

There are lots of different variations on how to layer a lasagna depending on what you are using and how many different ingredients you have, but this is what I did for THIS version.

From the bottom to the top:

• 1 cup of marinara
• 5 noodles
• 1 cup marinara
• 2 cups spinach
• 5 noodles
• tofu ricotta mixture
• 1 cup marinara
• 5 noodles
• 1 cup marinara
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 5 noodles
• 1 cup marinara
• thinly sliced zucchini
• sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast.

1 cup sauce

Layer of Noodles

1 cup sauce

2 cups baby spinach

Layer of noodles

Tofu ricotta mixture

1 cup sauce

2 cups baby spinach

Layer of noodles

1 cup sauce

Thinly sliced zucchini

Sprinkle with nooch (nutritional yeast)

Cover with foil – Bake for 30 min @ 375º, then uncover & bake for 10-15 minutes more

It does depend on your box of lasagna and how many noodles are in there, but mine only had 19! So annoying! LOL So I made my first layer 4 since that part of the dish is slightly smaller and then did 5 for the other layers. Drives my OCD crazy….

The 5th noodles you put perpendicular and will probably be too long for your dish. I just use my kitchen shears to trim it to fit.

If you try this recipe please comment below to let me know how it turned out for you! Share on Facebook or Pinterest, if you liked it!