The tools

The steps

If you use whole garlic & onion
Cook your garlic & onion in the big pan on low-ish heat until they soften. Use whatever oil you want. If you're using powder, you can skip this step.

Brown your meat in the big pan on medium heat. Use whatever oil you want. Once sufficiently browned, add the tomato sauce & turn the heat down low.
If you're using garlic & onion powder, you can add those now. However much you want.

In the big bowl, mix your ricotta, parmesan, and egg together. Feel free to use your hands. You probably don't need the parmesan, but don't skip the egg. It makes ricotta spreading a lot easier.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. You can do this much earlier if you want, but I like using the preheating time as a spacer for letting the sauce simmer.

If you're using boiled noodles
Boil your noodles. If you get em boxed, it'll have instructions. If you made em yourself, good for you.

If you're using oven ready noodles
This is the one and only place in the recipe where I care about brand. The best oven ready lasagna noodles you can buy come from Barilla and Giovanni Rana. If you have my baking dish size, you'll need two boxes of Barilla, or three bags of Giovanni Rana.
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In the baking dish, start with a layer of sauce, then your noodles, then the ricotta mixture, and finally a layer of mozarella. Do this three times. Then do a meat layer, use the last of your ricotta, one more layer of noodles, the last of your meat, and the last of your mozarella. The content of each layer doesn't matter too much, but be sure you have enough mozzarella to cover the top entirely. Trust me, that step is important.

Finally, cover the pan, put it in the oven, and leave it for 15 minutes. When that time is up, take the cover off and let it cook for 25 more minutes.

When it's out of the oven, let it cool. 15 minutes at most. If you cut in now, it'll leak out into slop; which is delicious on its own, but it's not lasagna. When the rest of the lasagna cools, you can fridge it for leftovers. If you cut one piece into four bite-sized squares, it microwaves really well too.

Bonus variant: Baked ziti

This is almost the exact same recipe with slightly different ingredients. I make this when I want a lasagna-like food with a little less of the effort.

The food

All of the above, except

The tools

All of the above, but you probably want a second bowl for your mozzarella

The steps

Follow the same steps as the above recipe, with the following variations:

Chop your string cheese horizontally into cubes. If you want, you can shred some as a final topping, but it's not essential.

Boil your noodles. I don't think you can get oven-ready ziti. If you find oven-ready ziti, please let me know.

Pour all of your noodles and all of your meat sauce into the big deep pan. Mix well.

Add the ricotta. Mix a little, but don't overmix. You want big globs throughout the ziti. If you have a mozzarella topping, add that now.

Bake as before. 375°F oven, 15m covered, 25m uncovered. Unlike the lasagna, you can dig into this immediately.

If it comes out grey & gross-looking, you probably overmixed the ricotta. You can brighten it up again with a small can of tomato sauce.

Other variants

The best thing about lasagna & ziti is you can do basically anything with it. Here are some variants I've tried that turned out really good.