Making The Pioneer Woman’s Lasagna Dip Kinda Healthy

In one of my favorite YouTube series, chef Chris Morocco recreates popular dishes blindfolded, using all his senses except sight. In his latest challenge, he was tasked with making The Pioneer Woman’s Lasagna Dip with Pasta Chips. It’s a fun watch but before you head that direction, let’s talk about making a slightly healthy lasagna dip.

My spin on Ree Drummond’s lasagna dip beefs up the original dip with more meat, a lower fat cheese sauce, and options for higher protein pasta chips. In the end, it ends up being a higher protein, lower fat, and lower calorie dip option.

The Meat Sauce for Lasagna Dip

The original Pioneer Woman lasagna dip calls for ground beef and hot breakfast sausage. I considered using lean ground pork with Italian seasoning but found a ground Italian sausage from H-E-B that didn’t have that much fat. You could use any ground meat combo for your dip, though.

My Kinda Healthy spin also uses double the meat. Because who wants to use half a pound of ground beef or sausage?

Other than the meat, you’ll need a can of diced tomatoes, tomato paste, and freshly minced garlic. If you’re not using double or triple concentrated tomato paste, it’s time to upgrade! The flavor is much more intense than the plain cans of tomato paste.

Side note: For a spicy kick, you could add some Calabrian chiles like in my 30 minute turkey lasagna and garlic parmesan chicken tenders.

Be sure you give your meat sauce time to simmer with the tomatoes. You can get an idea of the thick meat sauce you’re looking for in the assembly photo below.

It’s also worth mentioning that this is a simplified meat sauce. If you have another go-to bolognese or Sunday sauce, you could use it for this lasagna dip.

Check out my ground turkey bolognese or Instant Pot bolognese recipes if you’d like a couple healthy options.

The Cheese for Lasagna Dip

The Pioneer Woman’s version uses a unique combination of ricotta and cottage cheese, which lucky for us are both cheeses with readily available low fat counterparts.

You’ll mix the two together with grated parmesan, basil, and Italian parsley.

Assembling and Baking

The assembly of lasagna dip is not all that different from making traditional lasagna. Meat sauce goes in a baking dish first, followed by the ricotta mixture and mozzarella cheese, and then that’s repeated once more.

The ricotta and cottage cheese mixture is on the thicker side. So don’t worry about spreading it into an even layer. Just place dollops of it around the dip.

Top the baked lasagna dip with fresh parsley and/or basil and serve warm with baked pasta chips (more on that below), crostini, or your choice of dipping apparatus. If you’ve tried my whipped feta and roasted tomatoes dip, the grilled ciabatta would be a great option here.

The Baked Pasta Chips

If you’re unfamiliar with pasta chips, you’ll want to cook pasta al dente in boiling salted water. Then briefly cool, cut into chips, toss with olive oil and grated parmesan, and bake in an even layer for about 20 minutes at 375ºF. It’s important to make sure all the chips are evenly golden brown to avoid chewy chips.

Other Options

This lasagna dip is great regardless of what it’s dipped with. While pasta chips are trendy and fit this dish perfectly, they’re a bit tedious to make. For a quicker option, the crostini I mentioned above is definitely worth a look.

You could also use other pasta shapes like farfalle to avoid cutting the lasagna sheets into chips. And using the air fryer for smaller batches (great for leftovers, too) or reheating chips works great. Check out my air fryer pasta fries for an example.

This also opens the door for using higher protein, lower carb pasta options. It’s tricky to find macro friendly lasagna sheets, but there are plenty of chickpea farfalle options.

More Healthy Copycat Recipes

• Chick-Fil-A Grilled Nuggets (in the air fryer)
• Five Guys Cajun Fries
• Sausage McGriddle
• Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch
• Torchy’s Tacos Brushfire Tacos
• Animal Style Double Doubles (In-N-Out)

And that about covers it. I always appreciate recipe reviews and if you have a question about this lasagna dip I didn’t cover, drop it in the comments below. Enjoy!