We Tasted and Ranked the Best Oven Ready Lasagna Noodles at the Grocery Store

Oh, lasagna. A favorite dish of orange cartoon cats and also most people in most places. What could be controversial? It is basically just a savory parfait of red sauce, meat, spinach, noodles, and garlicky, cheesy goodness, and if I’ve learned anything from the Academy Award-winning movie Shrek, it’s that parfaits may be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet. But for a parfait to be truly “parfait” (“perfect” in French…fitting), the ingredients need to be top-notch. So we set out to find the best oven ready, no boil lasagna noodles to make your savory parfait-making experience as “parfait” as humanly possible.

What are oven ready lasagna noodles?

What we taste tested here are lasagna noodles that have been par-boiled then dried so that you can layer them into your lasagna still dry rather than boiling then layering a bunch of floppy noodles that have a tendency to tear. Moisture from the tomato sauce, ricotta, and other ingredients will fully moisten and cook the noodles in the oven, thus saving you time and dishes. If you’ve ever boiled then layered lasagna noodles, you know what a great shortcut no boil lasagna noodles are.

What we looked for in the best no boil lasagna noodles

• They should be firm rather than mushy. Listen, oven ready lasagna noodles don’t necessarily need to be al dente, but we happen to like a little bit of chew left in our lasagna layers.
• Texture. We love ridges and those frilly edges that give it a classic lasagna aesthetic (and great mouthfeel).
• Flavor. Good pasta has a nice, wheaty nuttiness that pairs excellently with red sauce and salty cheese.

So without further adoodles, here are our favorite oven ready lasagna noodles!

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Best Smooth

Ronzoni Oven-Ready Lasagna

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Ronzoni’s oven ready lasagna noodles are the only totally ridge-free and frill-free noodles to make our list. These are short, flat sheets of dry pasta. Once we cooked them in some sauce, they ended up much softer and thinner than all of the others on this list. The Ronzoni noodle absorbed the sauce flavor really well, more than any other on this list, and had a velvety-smooth mouthfeel without being mushy. This is the best noodle to choose if you like the pasta to blend into your lasagna texture and flavor a bit more.

Credit: Merc / Ronzoni

Rating:

8/10

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Best Neutral Flavor

Mueller’s Oven-Ready Lasagna

Walmart

Mueller’s lasagna noodles are thicker than Ronzoni but slightly thinner than the other two on this list. They have those classic ruffled edges, and instead of wavy lines down the middle, straight little raised ridges. Also, these noodles come in long strips as opposed to flat little rectangles like the Ronzoni. The pasta itself has slightly less of that pleasant, wheaty pasta flavor than the top pick on this list, but if this is what’s available to you, it’s a good pick that will give you a thick, al dente noodle and great mouthfeel from the ridges.

Credit: Merc / Walmart

Rating:

8.5/10

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Best Al Dente

Signature Select Pasta Oven-Ready Lasagna

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These no boil lasagna noodles were pretty much neck-and-neck with our number one in terms of flavor and texture. Signature Select noodles are nice and thick, they have bite even after they’ve been cooked in sauce, and the ridges make for a pleasant mouthfeel. This was the only ridged pasta we tried that had larger waves instead of little raised lines, and that made them a bit unique. Granted, these no boil lasagna noodles don’t have a huge amount of flavor on their own, but when it comes to pasta for lasagna, that isn’t always necessary.

Credit: Merc / Instacart

Rating:

9/10

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Best of the Best

Great Value Oven Ready Lasagna Pasta

Instacart

Oh, Walmart ol’ chap, you’ve done it again. These noodles are, without a doubt, the best of the bunch. They cook to a perfect bouncy, chewy al dente, and they have small ridges similar to the Mueller’s noodles that made for an excellent mouthfeel—you can actually detect the texture of the noodle, even when there are a bunch of other textures in your lasagna (cheese, sauce, greens, etc.). Also, of all the lasagna noodles we tried in our taste test, Great Value was the only brand flavorful enough that you could taste the delicious savory, umami nuttiness from the pasta itself, and this flavor still came through even once we added sauce, garlic, parmesan, and ricotta to the mix. Truly a flawless lasagna noodle and proof positive that you can find the best of lasagna noodles in the most Walmart of places.

Credit: Merc / Instacart

Rating:

10/10

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Other oven ready lasagna noodles we tried

Barilla Oven-Ready Lasagne