The Creamy Lasagna Ricotta Swap That Lets You Get Creative With Flavor

Lasagna was the most popular Italian dish in America in 2024, according to Statista, and that's not hard to believe. Layers of meat, cheese, and sauce with pasta sound delicious. It's one of the ultimate comfort foods and is incredibly versatile, with endless recipes and flavor combinations that keep it fresh. A traditional lasagna is usually made with a simple tomato sauce, ground meat, and layers of ricotta cheese. But if you want to up your cheese game for a creamier option, you could swap out that ricotta for cream cheese.

Cream cheese will make the finished lasagna a lot smoother than ricotta. It has a richer quality and a slightly sharper taste than typically mild ricotta, which makes it a standout. More than that, when you are looking for ways to elevate lasagna, cream cheese offers you a whole new world of flavor options. While ricotta is a fairly plain cheese, cream cheese comes in multiple flavors that can add a new dimension to lasagna. If you don't feel like straying too far from traditional, layering cream cheese with ricotta is a good way to keep it close to the classic while making the end result a little richer.

Plain cream cheese is great for an elevated version of a classic lasagna. But it's easy enough to swap in herb and garlic cream cheese for a flavor boost, or even spicy jalapeño cream cheese if you like a little heat in your Italian food.

Some types of cream cheese will never be appropriate for a lasagna, no matter how you're making it. For instance, strawberry cream cheese will probably not work well with a traditional lasagna. That said, if you were interested in trying a dessert lasagna, you could swap out the tomato sauce for something fruit-based and replace the meat with chocolate cookie crumble. In that case, strawberry cream cheese might make it all come together. There are also honey pecan and brown sugar cinnamon cream cheese versions, which would be great in a dessert variation. You can even get a pumpkin spice flavor. If you're making a seafood lasagna with a cream sauce, smoked salmon cream cheese could blend in beautifully. Herb and garlic or chive cream cheese would work just as well here, too.

How you make use of the cream cheese will also affect the end result. You can use cream cheese straight from the container, taking spoonfuls and dropping them in dollops onto the pasta so that it will soften and melt a little as it cooks. Layer it with mozzarella or parmesan so you have a full cheese layer, since cream cheese will not fill the space as ricotta would. Alternatively, you can make a cream cheese mixture. To achieve a texture closer to ricotta's, mix cream cheese with some mozzarella or parmesan and a bit of sour cream until it becomes easy to spread over the pasta. Whichever way you decide to do it, and whatever flavors you use, it's sure to be a delicious result in the end.