What's more popular than pancakes, banana bread, and chocolate chip cookies? With 12 million views in the last five years alone, it appears the answer is John Chandler's lasagna. The dish, with its nearly two pounds of meat and more than two pounds of cheese, is appropriately called the "World's Best Lasagna," and it's spent more than 10 years as the No. 1 recipe on AllRecipes.com (or close to it; it seems to be No. 2 at the moment, behind Banana Crumb Muffins), reports the Washington Post.
The 43-year-old Texan, whose day job is not chef but salesman, first put the lasagna, a variation of his mom's recipe, up on the site in 2001 (total number of recipes he's added to the site: two). And though AllRecipes' users—it's the most trafficked English-language food site—typically want quick and easy meals, Chandler's 21-ingredient dish, with its 3-plus-hour prep and cooking time and a cost the Post estimates at $40, has somehow persisted as the exception. With its 8,856 five-star reviews, it's certainly a big hit, though there are detractors ("Amy" described it as being "runny and not worth the trouble to make ... I'll stick to stouffer's from now on"). Many of the positive reviewers share their variations, and Chandler has some extra advice of his own: "The sauce is best when you salt it to taste and then, once you get it going, just flavor it as you go." Click for the recipe, or read about why you should add blueberries to your grocery list. (More cooking stories.)