Sometimes homemade pasta is great, really hits the spot, just some noodles and sauce, and you are good to go.
And other times, it seems more appropriate to step it up a notch, and go for ravioli or some other stuffed pasta. And in my house, when it is time to make pasta, I always go for Einkorn flour as my base.
Which means that this recipe is going to be an Einkorn ravioli recipe, and not some post about ravioli that use conventional flour.
Ravioli aren’t much more difficult than straight up noodles like spaghetti or fettuccini, but it certainly does involve a few extra steps and ingredients. But I start in exactly the same way that I do for noodles, which you can read about on an earlier blog post.
Instead of using the noodle cutting attachments, I move the long flat rolled out pasta sheets to a ravioli mold to get it set up for a filling, usually a goat cheese based filling, but that is just personal preference.
Before I even start making the pasta, I always make my filling first, so that the pasta is not left out on the counter to dry out while I make my filling. My wife and I are both big fans of goat cheese, which has the added benefit of getting nice and creamy with a little heat and can get piped into your ravioli pretty smoothly and easily.
Once I mix up my filling, whatever I’m in the mood for that day, I spoon it into a gallon storage bag, like a Ziploc bag, and trim one corner off so that you can squeeze a bit of filling out into each ravioli as you make them.
Just like with pasta noodles, I mix the egg yolks, Einkorn flour, olive oil and one whole egg in the bowl of my stand mixer using the dough hook until nice and shiny, but not too sticky, which would be an indication that the dough needs a bit more flour.
I prefer the ravioli mold sets that have a top piece, a secondary part that you can use to gently press into the pasta sheet that you have gently laid over the bottom tray with the zig-zag cutting teeth.
Next step is to squeeze a dollop, or maybe a big teaspoon, of your filling into each depression before gently laying a second layer of pasta over the top and pressing down until the teeth of the bottom tray cut the pasta into individual ravioli.
Just like with fresh pasta noodles, fresh Einkorn ravioli don’t need to cook nearly as long as most store bought options. Boil plenty of water on the stove, add enough salt to make the water taste like the ocean and heat the fresh ravioli for three to four minutes, until they are all floating.
If you are making a pan sauce with dinner, or any kind of sauce, I find adding the ravioli from the boiling water to the sauce for an extra minute makes a really big difference in both the sauce and the ravioli. It brings the entire experience together, instead of having pasta with sauce on top, it becomes more of an incorporated union.
Plus, when you strain out the ravioli to add to the sauce, you will no doubt slop over a bit of that cooking water, that has all sorts of starch in it, which will help thicken up your sauce, most likely making it even better.
Einkorn Ravioli Recipe
Ingredients
Einkorn Pasta
- 2 cups Einkorn all purpose flour
- 1 egg
- 6 egg yolks
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Ravioli Filling
- 10-12 ounces goat cheese, crumbled 2 containers
- 8 ounces ricotta cheese 1 container
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
Butternut Squash Filling with Goat Cheese
- 18 oz butternut squash chunks, roasted
- 6 oz goat cheese crumbles
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp sage, dried
Instructions
Ravioli Filling
- add all of your ingredients for the filling into the bowl of your stand mixer
- using the paddle attachment, stir until smooth
- place all of the filling into a plastic storage bag and trim off the corner so that you can squeeze the filling through when it is time to fill the ravioli
Make The Pasta Dough
- Place all ingredients into stand mixer with dough hook
- Turn on to medium low speed and combine ingredients until pasta becomes smooth and shiny
- Roll dough onto floured counter and divide into halves
- Using your pasta roller, either a stand mixer attachment or hand crank, open rollers to widest setting
- Roll pasta out on counter with hand or rolling pin and then run through the pasta roller
- Fold rolled piece into thirds or halves and roll back through the roller
- Repeat this step a few times to really make the pasta smooth, lightly adding flour as needed to keep from sticking
- Repeat with the second half of pasta dough
- Continue reducing roller settings and passing noodles through until pasta is at desired thickness, keeping the pasta sheets as wide as possible to fit over the ravioli molds
Assemble The Ravioli
- lightly spray your ravioli mold with non-stick spray, over an open dishwasher door is a good place
- gently place one of your pasta sheets over the ravioli mold and gently press into it with the top piece of the mold set to make a slight impression
- fill each impression with a dollop of filling from the plastic storage bag, less is usually better here, don't want to add too much because the ravioli will burst when putting them together
- If you are using long sheets of pasta, fold your sheet over the top of the filled ravioli tray – and if you are using shorter separate sheets of pasta, gently place the second sheet on top of the filled ravioli tray
- very gently use your hand or small rolling pin and press down on the pasta on top of the filling and go slowly! If you press down too hard or too quickly, the dough will tear or the filling will flow over into an adjacent pocket, which is no good!
- when you've pressed it down enough, use a small rolling pin and press down hard to ensure that the zig zag outline on the bottom tray cuts into the dough and you have separate ravioli now
- remove the excess dough and set aside, the remove the ravioli from the mold and set on a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat and repeat with the remaining dough
- when done with all of the pasta noodles, if you'd like, you can take all of the remnants and repeat the steps to roll back out into more sheets to make more ravioli. I find that this works well once, but after that the remnants are a bit too tough to make good pasta out of
- when done with cutting, filling and shaping all of your ravioli, put your baking sheet into the freezer for at least an hour
- once they are frozen you can divide them into whatever you consider an appropriate portion and then freeze until ready to use
Cooking Ravioli
- heat plenty of water in a small pot
- when water is hot, add about three tablespoons of salt, water should taste salty
- when water is boiling, add your ravioli and stir to get the water spinning so they don't stick to the bottom
- cook for 3-4 minutes until they are all floating, remove either to a serving bowl or transfer directly into your sauce that you are preparing on another burner
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