how to make perfect STUFFED SHELLS

conquilier in italian translates into seashells you see them labeled a lot in america as shells or jumbo shells this one is called conquilioni there's three sizes to this pasta you've got conchillate which is the smallest one you've got the conquilier which is the medium sized one and the conquirione which is the larger jumbo size i always find it amazing how they found a way to make pasta into the shape of a seashell but anyways any shell this size just screams to me to be stuffed and that's what we're gonna make today so let's just jump right into it we're gonna start by making our weekday sauce which is just our basic house tomato sauce it's one of the first videos that i made that was successful and it was just basically an idea of how to make a really good tomato sauce from scratch in about 30 minutes but but we can always take the idea of weekday sauce which is sort of a single batch and double it which we're going to need anytime we bake a pasta or something i always like to double the sauce recipe have extra sauce you can always save it it's always better to have more sauce than to have less sauce so always keep that in mind today we're just gonna cover weekday sauce we're gonna make a double batch of it and that's gonna be the base for what we cook our shells in in the oven so it just starts with really good tomatoes these are the best tomatoes you're gonna buy in the u.s so if you see these these are gold california grown tomatoes and when it comes to weekday sauce or tomato sauce in general you're living and dying by the quality of your tomatoes so find the ones that taste good if you don't have these try a variety of tomatoes ones that you like that have the right acidity and sweetness for you should be the one that you seek out i like my tomato sauce smooth so i run it through a food mill i love food mills maybe you don't this is one of the things that makes a tomato sauce kind of the right consistency just the way that i like it takes the seeds out takes the skins out all you are left is with the pure tomato pulp that we can then cook the water out of and make it the right thickness and have a perfect tomato sauce you can use a blender just do not blend it like on a high heat do like pulses a food processor probably works a little bit better you just don't want to beat a lot of air into it and like change the color from like red to an orange i sort of just like to pour the juice in and squeeze the tomatoes with my hand so to break them up it's just gonna make running them through the food mill a little bit easier otherwise they can sometimes get stuck in there and if you like it chunky you can always use your hands and just crush the tomatoes with your hands but i like going the extra step just work all the tomatoes through the food mill and then scrape all the pulp at the bottom off and make sure you don't waste any of that good stuff then scrape up some of the inside of the food mill work the remaining tomatoes through the food mill again and you'll see you've produced another round of pulp which is gonna help thicken the sauce i got two basil stems we're gonna infuse olive oil along with a few sliced cloves of garlic and i like to cut my garlic very thinly i don't like to smash it cutting it thinly brings out a more subtle version of the garlic that i'm looking for you can do it however you like i like to split them in half and i find they just seem to pop straight out of the shell you don't need any fancy schmancy tricks maybe sometimes they're hard to get out but i find 90 of the time easy breezy now we got to get the sauce on the stove cooking and then we can move on to the rest of the recipe now i've got a wide large high rimmed pan you could use a medium sized pot if you want just add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan then we're going to throw in the basil stems and the garlic and we're going to infuse those flavors into the olive oil i like to take the garlic just to like a light golden brown and then i'm going to kill the heat before adding the tomatoes all in one motion if you're scared about it it's gonna splatter you gotta pour it all in once it'll cool the pan down fast enough to not splatter then you just wanna bring the sauce up to a simmer and you're just gonna let that cook until the water evaporates out of the sauce and you're left with a concentrated beautiful smooth tomato sauce now while that sauce cooks i've got this pot filled with water i'm just gonna add salt to it and bring it up to a boil we're gonna grate some cheese for this recipe i'm using one cup pecorino romano about a cup of parmigiano-reggiano then about a half a pound of dry whole milk mozzarella if you want to use fresh mozzarella you can but fresh is a little too wet for what i'm looking for you could dry it out of course but uh it's up to you i had this in the fridge needs to get used i'm gonna grate the hard cheeses on the small diamond grater and then the mats on the thick one pecorino is great for something like this like meatball stuffing is what i use pecorino for is because it brings the salt so so it's an act of seasoning the regulator a bit and then the pecorino has a lot of umami and it's a little bit nuttier and i like the combo of the two you could use either or [Music] i'm gonna eyeball it call that two cups of cheese one cup of parmesan one cup of pecorino honestly you just can't hate on polio and that should be enough that's going to go on the top before we bake it we're not going to put it in the filling now this looked like a really good rugota but i've never tried it so i want to see what the consistency is how wet or how dry it actually is underneath here oh yeah that looks good that's really thick so okay so this is a 48 ounces is that three pounds i don't need three pounds i probably need around two so let's just sort of eyeball it that should be enough we're only going to make a half batch today because shell is like it's not like a regular pasta half a pound of shells is equivalent to like a pound of pasta because you're stuffing it with so much cheese so in my opinion a half a pound of pasta can really serve like three to four people so if you're gonna make a full pound of the shells you can double the filling add the ragota to the other cheeses we're gonna add two eggs the zest of one lemon this won't add acid it'll just add lemon flavor and if you don't like lemon you can leave it out but in my opinion this makes the dish got some fresh parsley here we just want to finely dice it a touch of salt and a touch of pepper i'm actually going to add one more egg just to moisten it up a little bit that regard is just a touch dry so i just want to add a little bit of moisture back into it that's much better [Music] you can always spoon the filling into the shells but i'm gonna use a ziploc bag to pipe it in now there's like 70 60 or 70 shells in this bag i've made this a couple times recently and had five six maybe on a crazy night seven so making this whole thing is gonna be way too much for me so i'm gonna go with half and that half is gonna fill up a pan this big what is this a 9 by 13 pan so if you're going to make the big batch you're going to need like two 9 by 13 pans or bigger but for me to measure we're just going to pour an even layer save for another batch our water is boiling we can cook it off we want to cook these for five minutes the package says cook for 14. we're not going to cook for half we're going to cook for about a third of the time then we're going to bake for 40 minutes so there's going to get plenty of time for them to cook even if we cook them halfway it's going to be overcooked by the time we're done baking so i promise a third is going to be just fine add the shells to the water give it a stir and we're just going to let it go for five minutes as you can see the tomato sauce it's kind of perfect it's the perfect thickness the tomatoes have sucked up that garlic and basil flavored oil and it's emulsified all we have to do is season it with some salt and it's ready to go five minutes later we can check on the shells you can see i can just sort of pinch them open and closed that's the perfect doneness to fill them with the rigotta then drain them just do not rinse them under water that's a beautiful thing just like any other pasta bake we're gonna cover the bottom of the baking dish with a layer of tomato sauce we need some moisture to help finish cooking the pasta let them cool just enough to touch and then we can start piping them with the rigoto you kind of just want to make sure you thoroughly fill them they have a deep center so just make sure you fill that deep center fully now to me this is the fun part any excuse to pipe something i kind of like to jump on so get some friends together some family and pipe these shells out once all the shallows are nestled into the baking dish then we can go on top splash some of that tomato sauce on top like a jackson pollock painting adding a little bit more moisture and color to the top it's going to make this thing look really beautiful then i'm just going to lightly finish it with some of that shredded mozzarella grated parmigiano-reggiano and then a touch of olive oil and it's ready to either bake or to store and bake off at a later date now we're gonna cover it so that we can steam it to finish cooking it for 20 minutes at 4 25 then we're going to take this foil off and cook it for another 20 minutes we're going to cook it for about 40 minutes it should be able to hold a fork once it's done cooking if we want we can always pop that broiler on create some nice browning on top sort of give it that lasagna baked corner feel to all the little shells because they're kind of sticking up which gives us an opportunity to create some texture so i forgot to let the stove heat up so make sure you preheat the oven i'm just gonna let that heat up and then pop this into the oven so i pop it into the oven set a timer for 20 minutes 20 minutes later i go and check on it and remove the aluminum foil it's looking beautiful right now now we just want to create some color so back on our set timer for 15 minutes and then check on it and then broil it for our final five minutes see this bubbling that's always a good sign and a bake the 15 minutes has passed now we're gonna turn the broiler on and finish for the last five minutes under the broiler don't just cook it for five minutes because i said five minutes you gotta use your eyes and see what kind of color you're developing that's gonna be the determining factor if you see colored kind of developing more in one spot than the other just kind of shimmy the pot around and make sure it's evenly browned on all sides then you can shut the heat off get it out of the oven and let that settle for a minute before digging in but isn't she a beauty now to plate a portion i like to start with a little base of the tomato sauce then we're going to start to plate the shells i like to put a few on the bottom and then one on top sprinkle of grated parmigiano-reggiano a beautiful sprig of basil right in the middle a touch of good olive oil forget about it told you it would hold a fork it's really fantastic and what i like is that little hint of lemon it really brightens up a nice rich dish out of control and with that caramelized mozzarella intermittently you get little bits of it every now and then it's that deep flavor oh i don't know what to say my taste buds they're just going crazy if you want to grab yourself some conclione i'm going to leave a link down in the description otherwise i'm going for seconds that's all that i have today i'll see you next time until then take care of yourself it's like a little mini italian cheese taco and go feed yourself

Channel: NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Views: 254,346

Keywords: stuffed shells, pasta recipe, how to make stuffed shells, stuffed shells with ricotta, stuffed shells recipe, ricotta (cheese), stuffed pasta, how to make stuffed pasta shells, italian recipe, pasta shells, baked pasta, pasta sauce, weekday sauce, classic stuffed shells, red sauce, marinara sauce, italian food, how to make stuffed shells with ricotta cheese, ricotta stuffed shells

Id: JFAsBJOoi3Q

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021