Pork and Apple Lasagne (Slow Cooker)

I had previously bought some pork mince on discount and directly substituted it for beef mince in a lasagne, the result wasn't great. I did some research and some thinking and I found that pork and apple is a popular combination with the herbs sage and rosemary commonly used with it, additionally, I have made a pork and potato bake more than a few times which uses a white sauce spiced with mustard so I thought I would try this combination for my lasagne.

Ingredients

Pasta

Lasagne sheets

Meat

250g Pork Mince

400g Tin Tomatoes

3 small apples diced (I used Braeburn) roughly 280g

Teaspoon Sage

Teaspoon Rosemary

White sauce

20g Butter

20g Flour 

400ml Milk

Teaspoon Mustard

Additional

100g Mature Cheddar cheese

Equipment

Slow cooker 1.8L

Brown the pork mince in batches in frying pan then transfer to large bowl, add a tin of tomatoes, the diced apple, sage and rosemary and mix together.

Place the butter and flour in a bowl and microwave 800w for 30 seconds then mix until it clumps together.

Start adding the milk in small amounts, mixing it in and turning the clump into a thick smooth paste; do this until you have added around 150ml of milk.

Microwave for 1 minute and then stir the mixture until it is smooth again.

Microwave for 1 minute and again stir the mixture until it is smooth.

Mix in the rest of the milk, ensure the mixture is smooth.

Microwave for 1 minute and stir.

Microwave for 1 minute and stir, at this point my sauce started to boil up my mixing jug, so watch carefully.

Microwave for 30 seconds more and you should be finished.

Finally add in the mustard and allow to cool, the sauce will thicken some more as it cools.

Add half the meat to the bottom of the slow cooker.

Cover with lasagne sheets.

Put half the cheese on top and cover with half of the sauce then add a further layer of lasagne sheets.

Add the remainder of the meat and cover with lasagne sheets then add the rest of the sauce making sure it spreads to cover all of the sheets or they won't cook properly, then finally top with the last of the cheese.

Cook on low for 5 hours.

The internal temperature hit 80 degrees C in my cooker at this time.

The first helping out of the slow cooker was somewhat sloppy I put this down to the sauce still being hot and the amount of liquid in the tomatoes, I have previously drained a tin of tomatoes through a sieve into a jug and the liquid amount ran in at around 250ml. Food in a slow cooker does need liquid to cook safely so I am reluctant to experiment with reducing the liquid content at this time, I have added this note for completeness.