How to Cook Fresh Ravioli – A Glance at One of the Yummiest Traditional Italian Dishes

Frozen or Fresh Ravioli – Which is the Better Pick?

As much as you can purchase pre-made or frozen ravioli straight from the grocery store, making one from scratch is considered more fulfilling and therapeutic. Personally, I prefer making my own ravioli in the comfort of my kitchen.

This way, I can control how much filler that goes into the pasta. As you might come to notice, this has a significant effect on the taste of the resulting ravioli.

Having said that, the cooking process for both frozen and fresh ravioli is almost the same. The differences stem from the preparation process and the duration that the ravioli takes to cook.

Should you go with the latter – making a fresh helping from scratch – here is a list of the ingredients that you’ll need.

1. Fresh ravioli
2. Salt
3. Four-to-five teaspoons of olive or vegetable oil.
4. Strainer
5. A decent-size pot with a cover
6. A sharp knife

Cooking Instructions

With a little dexterity and culinary knowledge, preparing fresh ravioli is as easy as it can get. Here’s how you can go about it.

STEP ONE

Using a sharp knife, separate the slices of fresh ravioli if they happen to be stuck to each other. Remember that frozen ravioli is easily separable, you don’t have to use a knife for that.

At this point, if you don’t have pre-prepared ravioli with you, you can work up the pasta quickly using a ravioli maker. The process is quite easy to hack, and the only major ingredients that you may need for this is a filling of your choice, along with eggs, all-purpose flour, and salt.

For starters, mix the dough then wrap it up snugly in a plastic bag and let it rest for a few minutes. In the meantime, prep your filling. You might want to use approximately one tablespoon of a filling for each ravioli to be made.

Otherwise, you can speed the process by making use of a pastry bag and eyeballing the entire amount. If you don’t have a ravioli maker, use a pastry brush and a tiny bowl of water to seal up the dough. Alternatively, you can use egg whites for this instead of water if you have a few eggs nearby.

After this, roll up that dough. Here, it is important to remember to just work with just a quarter of the freshly made dough at a time. This prevents the unworked dough from drying out before you roll it. Speaking of which, roll it thoroughly and evenly to about 1/16th of 1 inch or if you’re using a pasta machine (you may also like: ravioli maker), use the second last setting on the select dial knob.

Ideally – although this is a bit hard to do – the dough ought to be about the full width of your pasta roller. That’s approximately four to five inches wide. After this, ensure that you lay out the prepared dough on a flat, broad surface that has been dusted lightly with semolina flour and cut it up in even-sized pieces.

One-quarter of each dough should yield about 12 ravioli or there about.

STEP TWO

Add about five to seven quarts of water to the large pot. Let the water boil for approximate two to three minutes while sprinkling the salt.

Also, add four teaspoonfuls of olive or vegetable oil to the boiling water. This is done to prevent the pasta from sticking to the sides of the pot thus ruining the ravioli.

STEP THREE

Boil the water to a high temperature. At this juncture, it is advisable to cover the pot to make sure that the temperatures rise to about 100 degrees Celsius.

STEP FOUR

Add the freshly prepared ravioli for the next 6 to 8 minutes, while uncovered. While doing this, resist the temptation to stir it unnecessarily as the pasta may break apart.

Test the ravioli for readiness fishing out a piece using a slotted spoon and having a bite. Keep up the boiling if it is not yet done.

STEP FIVE

Drain the now cooked ravioli by pouring the entire combination to a strainer. You can also remove them directly using a slotted spoon.

Conclusion

Serve your ready ravioli with your favorite sauce. I prefer accompanying this set up with a soft drink or a glass of flavored yogurt.