Go to the Recipe: Seamless Ravioli
I have yet to experiment with other fillings for this method, but if the semolina can hydrate it might just work.
Would this work with say a pork belly filling?
LOVE IT
It worked! Was great!
Made these again with the correct brand of flour and ricotta. Came together nicely and are in the fridge. 30 minutes later as I sit on the couch I realize I forgot to add the egg yolks ti the ricotta mixture (multi-tasking and missed the last ingredient). Big deal? I guess I’ll find out Thursday night!
I haven't tested the actual moisture content yet, I have used chèvre with a little added cream and it worked the same.
What moisture content should the ricotta cheese be? Can another type cheese be used and moisture content looking for?
It takes about 3 minutes.
How long does one cook the egg yolk ravioli?
This sounded really good and easy. Followed recipe exactly, TOTAL FAIL.
Well, it works just fine, and it’s potentially a useful technique. I missed the chew and the mouthfeel of more traditional Ravioli. I find it reminiscent of very delicate quenelles.
honestly if you don't have it, it will still be delicious with out. But any citrus zest would be nice.
Any lemon zest substitutions?
They failed here.
that isn't something we tried but could be worth a nice gluten free shot!. try a few and let us know how it works out
no, the ricotta will not hold up.
How about possibly using chickpea flour??
Can these be frozen after pulling from semolina, but before cooking?
Is King Arthur's flour available ? They have multiple flours ....
Whoa. Definitely have never heard of that. I’m intrigued 🤔
okay too many failures to risk precious hard to come by ingredients...can't even get some of them on line..NEXT?
What kind of sauce would you recommend?
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we had some mixed results with the bobs flour, It truly works best with the Caputo brand, or even Shepards grain. How fine the mill was didn't really impact our results, Caputo is quite fine and the Shepards grain is pretty coarse. also the exact brand of ricotta we use is pretty dry, so if you have a looser one it is helpful to let it drain over some cheese cloth for a few hours. Hope that helps. Also make sure your water is not salted when you cook them.
Yeah this was a complete fail. First time on chefsteps. I blended Bob's red Mill finer. And let it sit for 3 days. Cheese mush with mushy grains
I had the exact same issue and I think it was because a) wrong brand of semolina (I used the same one as you), though I did add some AP to try to compensate; b) I used homemade ricotta and it might have been too dry, so my filling was then too dry and consequently didn’t create enough of a “pasta”.
I've tested this a few times now. Bob's semolina was the worse. I've landed on 2-1 ratio of bread flour & Anna semolina. I combine the flours and go from there. Definitely add and extra egg or two and for an extra punch to the filling, use some boursin cheese garlic & herb cheese. Do not salt the water; that was a critical failure.
FYI, the recommended scoup is 1 Tbsp/0.5oz/15mL/35mm.
Yep. No good. Threw all of the ricotta out. Try again this weekend.
Thanks Kyl! So I did not salt the water as I read that was a problem in another posts. Bob's Red Mill has a sandy consistency, but I don't know how it compared to other semolina flours as I've only ever used Bob's. If it doesn't work, I'll add another egg next time I attempt this. I guess being on the other side of the country Bob's Red Mill isn't around as much, but out here on the East Coast that is the most common "high end" flours, starches, etc. Thank you!
Hi Robert, how fine of a grind is the Bob’s semolina? That is one of the brands we did not trial so I’m not quite sure how that one works out. Also, did you salt your water? The few times I had that happen in our trials I had either salted the water, or the filling wasn’t wet enough/had enough time to rest. Hopefully you are good to go after the 72 hours. If it doesn’t work out after the 72 hours, I would guess that Bob’s Red Mill semolina needs more moisture to hydrate than the ones we used and adding 1 whole egg should help out.
Ugh. After 50 hours or so, I took one out and put it in low simmering water. The flour at first was ok and then slowly started to “peel” off the ricotta and then all I was left with was a warm ricotta ball. A very wet warm ricotta ball. Why wouldn’t the flour stay on the ricotta? I used the exact ricotta brand specified in the recipe. I used Bob’s Red Mill semolina. I did not sift the flour as I don’t really have a sifter. Just poured it over the pan and the ricotta straight from the back.
My “sifter” would be a #20 lab sieve, but the semolina already looked much finer than that so I didn’t think it’d matter.
Thanks for the help. Tomorrow I’ll take the rest out. Maybe they need 72 hours.
Just put mine in the fridge. The shape is definitely not there but I’m more interested in how it’s going to taste, etc. I’ll refine the shape for my next dinner party.
I made these and they turned out perfectly though note that the final shape is highly dependent on how nicely rounded your filling scoops are. Next time I'll stick the filling in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up a bit before I form the balls. The egg yolk alone was brilliant—what a cool technique.
I tried two different ricotta brands I found at Whole Foods, Belfiore and Bellwether Farms. The Belfiore tasted terrible and the texture was gritty, but the Bellwether Farms sheeps milk ricotta was incredible (http://bellwetherfarms.com/product/sheep-ricotta/). I found it to have the correct level of moisture for this technique as well.
The nice thing about this method is I'm not investing a bunch of time and cleanup on rolling out a dough, so I can do small portions at a time. For example, making just a few as a plating element in a larger dish is no big deal.
Sorry to hear that Brooke. There are only a few variables that will result in what happened though. One is just simply the specific type of ricotta you used might need more moisture. If that is the case, I would try to add one egg, whites and all to the filling. Another we found was that any salt in the simmering water will break it apart, as well as a rolling boil. I would do about 5-8 pieces at a time in low simmering water. Let us know if this is helpful.
Hi Shawn, sorry that didn't work out for you. The biggest variable I ran into that affected my success was the different ricotta I tested. A few types were too dry and I had to add a whole egg to have some more moisture.
Would love to know if anyone has had success with this recipe. I had similar results as others with dough not forming. Filling is amazing though... I even bought the recommended semolina flour off Amazon.
We tried these tonight and sadly they completely disintegrated when they hit the water. What went wrong? We followed the directions to the letter and even gave them extra time in the fridge to hydrate. Filling was delicious but we couldn’t eat them because they were basically mush. This was our first chefsteps fail.
Thanks Kyl.
Thanks for bringing that up—it was a typo and has been corrected. Just regular semolina, the stuff we use is the super fine double grind.
AWESOME! Glad you worked the time of rest out.
I did these and did half at 36 hours and the rest at about 72 hours. The first batch came out okay but the filling leaked quite a bit and looked pretty shaggy after cooking. The longer rested batch came out much more conistent and ravioli like. The filling itself was pretty perfect.
I definitely plan on playing wiht this a little more and maybe using as a Thanksiving or Christmas dinner first course.
In most parts of this recipe you refer to "semolina flour" but in one part you refer to "semolina “00” ". Are you referring to a mix of semolina and type 00 flours or is this a type of flour I've not heard of?
Shaun, do you have a pre-2004 Italian citation for this technique? Just curious if it was invented in the US or in Italy (seem my comments below).
I second this, my wife is gluten free so I'd be interested in seeing a gluten free version. Maybe worth trying with all purpose gluten free flour plus some xanthan gum if it's not already in the AP mix.
Ricotta doesn't freeze super well, the texture turns a bit grainy. Other than that it freezes fine.
Wonder if the technique would lend it self to gluten free.
We always covered it so the semolina and filling doesn't pick up extra moisture from the fridge, or any other unwanted smells.
when the tray goes into the fridge do you cover it or leave it uncovered?
It all depends on your filling. If the filling is nice after it freezes, than yes. I would test a few before you commit to the whole batch.
only one way to find out... let us know how they turn out.
this filling is certainly close to gnudi!
Can these be frozen after formed?
can this be done to make a meat filling ravioli?
In the Mediterranean we calm them Gnudi :-)
Amazon has 00 semolina (of course).
