Go to the Recipe: Seamless Ravioli
This is like Christmas today. So happy to see ChefSteps going strong.
Thanks, Chris Biagini!
This is brilliant.
I MISSED THIS...
Hallelujah This is what chef steps used to be like... now we go on a learning curve again....Happy to see you back Chris..Now go for it and impress us
AWESOME RECIPE!!! Its soo cool to have you guys back!!! OK...could these raviolis be done using a piping bag instead of the spoon? Also, seems like a lot of semolina is used...could it be reused later for...say pasta or the raviolis again? Re-sifted of course...
You can totally use a piping bag, and yes the semolina can be used again, and again, and again!
Brilliant, can’t wait to return home and try this. Welcome back!
Love this! FYI a while back I tried this idea with masa harina and some spare melty cheese- it worked well enough to fry, but there was definitely some refining that needed to be done (maybe masarepa?, goo-ier cheese?). I never returned to the idea, but this just jogged my memory and i'll have to get back on it. Can you imagine fried quasi-quesadilla spheres?
This is so impressive and ingenious- love you guys!
Genius. how long can they last in the fridge? Can i freeze the ravioli and then straight to boiling water?
Will this work with any filling with sufficient moisture?
As long as you end up with the end texture and moisture being about what the ricotta is you should be good. We made a tomato, a corn, and a mushroom one that all worked great.
Hi Christos, we didn't experiment at all with freezing them, and I would say they should last in the fridge as long as the egg, and ricotta would be good, so about 5-7 days would be fine.
Looks awesome. Now to find me a gluten free alternative to semolina :-(
This is similar to the gnudi at “the spotted pig” . Can’t wait to try this!
I have fine semolina flour -- and also have '00' flour -- but I notice in the instructions it states: 'Sift enough semolina “00” flour to fill a sheet pan to 1/4" depth of flour.' Not being very flour savvy, is there a "00" semolina -- or is all "00" flour semolina??? Or, can I use "00" flour in place of semolina? Help, please! Really looking forward to trying this, especially with the egg yolks surprise..
Hi Jacques, We haven’t tried this yet, but Caputo makes a gluten-free flour that might be worth trying.
Hi Linda, Look for double-milled or “00” semolina flour to use. “00” indicates that the semolina has been double milled to a finer consistency. The Caputo flour we use is indicated as “double milled” on their website. It’s confusing.
Interesting—kind of a thin-skinned pupusa. I’d love to see pics of your development of this recipe.
ChefSteps, I've never seen anything like this! Is it inspired by an already existing technique, or is it something you came up with yourselves?
I would experiment with light Riceflour and Tapioka. Sounds like seamless Ricotta Dimsum :-)
If you are only gluten-sensitive like me: I will try with the lightest ancient spelt flour I have. German Typ 630 is not that light than 00 Semolina, for me the only consequence I could think of is, that I can leave the ricotta more wet. With Riceflour and Tapioca I would drain some water from the Ricotta.
Most semolina available in grocery stores is a comparatively large grind compared to '00' milling. I finally found '00' semolina in an Italian grocery specialty store.
I live in Shanghai and I can't find the semolina 00, any substitution for that?
Apologies for hijacking this comment thread, but there wasn't another place to ask: How did you make the pressure cooker video (https://youtu.be/hQcu705JFrA) with the pressure cooker cut in half? Did you just stop cooking at various points and arrange everything in a half-pressure cooker, or did you actually cut one in half, glue some plexiglass to it, and actually use it to cook? Also, does this mean Chris Young is still part of ChefSteps or is that an old video? Grant is great but Chris does an excellent job of clearly explaining the science behind the food.
This is a great idea... Ideas in Food were doing it back in 2012... but still a great idea...
Amazon has 00 semolina (of course).
to me it looked like computer generated image.
I don't have my copy of their book in front of me, but the first reference I can find on the Ideas in Food blog is 2017.
https://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2017/06/polenta-seamless-ravioli-v1.html
Actually, this seems to be based on the "secret" technique for the signature gnudi dish at The Spotted Pig, which April Bloomfield seems to have eventually published in 2012. So that would originally date to about 2004. I gather they were the first to popularize gnudi in the US, although no one could replicate the non-traditional way they prepared them (which is presumably inspiration for the ChefSteps recipe).
https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Gnudi-395072
Amusingly, according to a Spotted Pig intern: "...the gnudi are only made by a privileged few and nobody can even be in the vicinity so as to keep the recipe secret."
http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2008/08/secrets_of_the.html
BTW, ChefSteps, one of the things I've always liked about many of your recipes in the past was that you often put them in context (for example, crediting Ideas in Food for the 75-degree egg, unlike the folks at America's Test Kitchen who claimed they invented it themselves last year on their TV show lol). I hope you keep that up, since some of us "chefies" (is that the cooking equivalent of foodies?) enjoy that sort of thing.
I'm definitely trying this dish for my next dinner party...
My thought too, although the images of the food cooking down are impressive. That must be an old video they had lying around, and despite being uploaded recently, it is uploaded in a way that it doesn't appear in the YouTube feed.
Then again, I wouldn't put it past the Modernist Cuisine crew to have actually cut one in half.
Unfortunately, Chris Young posted on Twitter this week that he has moved on from ChefSteps. But it's not unusual after a buyout for the former CEO to leave.
Semolina is made from the starchy endosperm of Durum wheat, so it is not identical to some other types of flour.
In contrast, the "00" refers to how finely milled the flour is, not to what goes into making it. In Italy, flour is rated from the coarsest 2 to the finest 000. 00 flours can be made from different grains and have varying protein content. 00 is more finely milled than most American flours.
Kenji posted a version of Spotted Pig's gnudi (citing it and Bloomfield, of course) in 2015:
https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/04/spotted-pig-ricotta-gnudi-food-lab.html
In the Mediterranean we calm them Gnudi :-)
can this be done to make a meat filling ravioli?
Hi, Jack. The pressure cooker was cut in half, and pot roast (and onions, and carrots) at different stages of cooking were set carefully inside of it, propped up with toothpicks. We took out the toothpicks and made the meat from various stages look more similar to each other in Photoshop, then warped between the images in After Effects.
Can these be frozen after formed?
Have you looked at Carrefour? I’m not in Shanghai now, but 4 years ago when we visited my wife’s family I found a lot of ingredients from Europe and the USA there. I also shopped at a market at Ba Bai Ban that carried a lot of European products. My wife also said that in the malls near Jing’an temple you can look in the basements and they have a lot of foods that are not carried in local markets. It definitely can be difficult to find items in Shanghai that aren’t used by the local people. Another idea is to go to an upscale Italian restaurant there and ask the kitchen staff if they can either sell some to you (if they use it) or if they know who carries it. Good luck!
here it is on the Ideas in Food blog, posted in september 2012. They cite Per Se and Matt Accarino as their inspiration
this filling is certainly close to gnudi!
only one way to find out... let us know how they turn out.
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.
when the tray goes into the fridge do you cover it or leave it uncovered?
We always covered it so the semolina and filling doesn't pick up extra moisture from the fridge, or any other unwanted smells.
Really interesting flour. Ingredients include "gluten free wheat starch". We tend to use King Arthur Gluten Free Flour for most things. I'm also curious to try amaranth or quinoa in the mix since they have higher protein.
Wonder if the technique would lend it self to gluten free.
Ricotta doesn't freeze super well, the texture turns a bit grainy. Other than that it freezes fine.
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.
Thanks for the link Agos, I thought there was something else hidden in their blog, but their search engine couldn't seem to find it. I wonder which was first, Spotted Pig or Per Se?
Actually, April also demonstrated this on The Mind of a Chef in 2013:
https://www.mindofachef.com/recipes/2017/11/7/gnudi
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).
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?
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.
AWESOME! Glad you worked the time of rest out.
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.
Thanks Kyl.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Yep. No good. Threw all of the ricotta out. Try again this weekend.
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.
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”.
Whoa. Definitely have never heard of that. I’m intrigued 🤔
Is King Arthur's flour available ? They have multiple flours ....
