Manicotti (next time from my grocer's freezer)

[fadedrose]

This has to be the devil's greatest revenge against cooks for whatever reason he's so mad I don't know.

Never made it before. Got 2 boxes, invited the family over. But once I started, regretted it with all my being.

The cheese filling - ricotta, eggs, mozzarella, parmesan, parsley - was so difficult to stuff into the manicotti tubes. It was all over my fingers, sloppy as hell, the manicotti wouldn't stay round - it kept falling on itself like a wet carpet. What a mess.

Anyway, I put the little carpet mats into a couple of baking dishes with sauce, and hid in the computer room when they started to eat. They loved it, which is just too bad because I will NEVER make manicotti again.

I used Barilla and cooked 6 minutes like they said.

[Irishonly]

1. I love your description

I have a recipe for manicotti and every once in a great while I pull it out. I look at it and put it back. I would love to hear how great manicotti bakers stuff the little buggers.

[noamnety]

2. I remember fighting to stuff cooked manicotti!

Life got way better once I realized you can stuff the raw pasta, THEN cook it. http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1835,150165-255194,00.html

[maddezmom]

3. next time use a plastic bag with an end cut off

and just squeeze it like a pastry bag to fill the tubes.

[fadedrose]

6. It's so messy

I couldn't fill a pastry tube or plastic bag or whatever without it getting all over the place and all over the bag as well. I did, however, do a reasonably good job of filling a dish towel...



No more. I think I'll even avoid it at the grocer's. It killed my taste for manicotti.



Now if only I could find the devil's recipe for something chocolate I'd be in a lot better shape.

[Denninmi]

8. Yup, that's how I do it.

Easy. I use the Wilton cake decorating tips and a plain, disposable gallon sized plastic bag. Works great. I stuff them uncooked, too, and just cook in the sauce.

[fadedrose]

9. Not that I'm crazy enough to do it again, but...

what type of filling do you make? I didn't want to use spinach or meat (I use a meat sauce) - am very partial to fresh parsley in everything that isn't chocolate...

[Ruby Reason]

17. I love manicotti, I like the bag idea. I'm going to try it.

[HopeHoops]

4. Refrigerate the mixture for half an hour before stuffing - makes it easy.

I use an iced tea spoon to stuff the shells. Long handle, small spoon - works great.

There's nothing I've found in the "freezer section" that can even come close to making it yourself. The same is true with stuffed shells.

[fadedrose]

10. It could be that I made my first mistake...

by taking the ricotta out of the refrig making it soft enough to blend with the other cheeses, egg and parsley..should I have refrigerated it again?

Next mistake was putting all that stuff in the very cheap food processor (works great, but it's not the cadillac brand) and making it too light and fluffy to work with...

Next mistake in a volumnious list was to cook the noodles at all - should have made them raw.

What's confusing are all the pictures you see of manicotti in the recipe books and on the boxes. They show sauce on the bottom with just a swish of sauce on top. How can they cook when they're not covered with sauce?

I covered mine with sauce to hide the ugly buggers....

Nobody at dinner mentioned the biggest mistake - you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and I'm 73, an old bitch if ever there was....

[HopeHoops]

13. Hand mix it!!! And you wouldn't want to eat the stuff in the book pictures.

It has to be smothered in sauce to cook properly.

[Inchworm]

5. Hehe, tried this with similar results

Yup, not doing it again. It was yummy but not worth the effort. It would have to be a special request, or I'd have to be absolutely wanting for something to do

[supernova]

7. Used to do stuffed jumbo shells

back in the 80s. I squeezed out the spinach and chopped up the fresh garlic. While it went better than the manicotti, I decided it was just too fussy a dish for someone who cooks AND works. And I think I gave up on it in the early 90s.

Yeah, I think the pastry bag I idea might be the way to go. The only other suggestion I have is to make and stuff a panful on a lazy day, then put it in the freezer. You can pull it out cook it just when you want to have a party. All you have to do on the day is make the sauce, which is much less involved.

All in all though, it's a dish I'm happy to leave to the restaurants for sheer labor intensity.

[fadedrose]

11. The sauce is less involved? Nobody told ME

What happens usually is that I overspice, then add more tomato sauce, paste, tomatoes, or whatever, and re-add some of the spices, calling for more tomato stuff, etc., and repeat this process till I have over a gallon of really good spaghetti sauce, with no way in the world I can tell anyone how to duplicate it.

[HappyMe]

12. lol! I feel your pain.

I gave up with the manicotti noodles myself.

I started using lasagna noodles. Slap the filling on it, roll up, done.

[Warpy]

14. Too bad, it was an easy supper for me

I just used an iced tea spoon to cram it into the tube sitting in my hand. It helps if you really undercook the tubes and 5-6 minutes at sea level sounds about right.

It's just an assembly job. I imagine you're like me and don't like your hands messy (and why do people choose exactly that time to get telephonitis?) and keeping the spoon in one hand and a cheap disposable glove on the other will help you out.

Another thing you can consider in the future is putting the filling into a heavier zip lock baggie, closing it, clipping off one corner, and using it like a pastry bag to fill the tubes. When you're done, you just toss the baggie.

Another guess is that this is the first time, the learning curve was a little on the steep side. The next time you make them (and yes, they're cheaper and better if you make the filling) will seem a lot easier, especially if you use my hints.

[msanthrope]

15. Manicotti the easy way--

First, make your filling. You want about 16 oz of ricotta. Go for the real stuff. Beat it up with 2 eggs with a whisk--add a little salt, plenty of pepper and some parsley, then a couple of big handfuls of shredded mozzarella, and at least 1/2 cup of parmesan or a locatelli. You can add spinach to this, just defrost a 10 oz bag and drain it super well, squeezing it.

Take a large measuring cup, or bowl, and fit a gallon-sized zipper bag over it, like fitting a trashbag in a trashcan. Spoon the filling from the bowl into the bag, zip up, and put in the fridge for and hour while you make the sauce and prep the noodles.

Sauce--you can use canned sauce, but use a thinner one, like a marinara, or add 1/2 a cup or red wine. Bring to a simmer on the stove at least a jar's worth.

Prep your pan by spraying it with a little cooking spray. Put a good ladleful of sauce in the pan and spread it out.

Fill a large bowl with very hot water and let the manicotti sit for a few minutes. Then carefully take one out and cup it in your hand with the bottom in your palm. Squeeze a bit from the bag into the tube (snip the corner of the bag). Don't squeeze from the top of the bag--you want to squeeze from much further down, only moving at bit at a time down to where your hands are.

Make a single layer in the pan, pour some sauce over, and sprinkle with more cheese. Bake at 350 for about 30-40 minutes, and test the noodles.

[auntAgonist]

16. When I make lasagna I don't cook the noodles first. I'm wondering if you

could do the same with Manicotti?

Fill the uncooked tubes and place them in the baking dish, cover with sauce. Maybe use a tad more sauce than you normally would and cover tightly with foil so that the steam cooks the pasta. (?)


I might have to try that. Manicotti is so good, but so messy.


pondering ....


aA
kesha

[msanthrope]

18. There's a variety of ways to do no-cook--

You can soak the manicotti tubes in hot, salted water for 10 minutes. Use a thinner sauce, like a marinara, or one that has been thinned with water or wine..not too much. About 1/2 cup of water/wine to a 28 oz jar will do it.

You can do true no boil, but then you MUST grease the bottom the pan well, and you MUST put at least a cup and a half of thinned sauce on the bottom, before you lay down the manicotti.

Or, you can do fresh. If you do fresh, then your cooking time is short, and you need to have a regular/thick sauce and your filling MUST come to room temperature before you use it.

Covering the pan for the first 20-25 minutes is a great idea.

Manicotti makes a better buffet dish than lasagna because of portioning, I think.

[Stinky The Clown]

19. There are two basic manicotti types

The premade tubes you used and the kind that are like crepes that are filled and rolled.

In my family, we always made the crepe kind. Arranged in a pan, sauced, and baked.

Filling the tubes is kind of a pain in the ass. The best success will come with using a pastry bag to fill them. I have also heard of people using some sort of cookie "shooter" but I have no experience with that. No matter, filling cooked, premade pasta tubes requires some practice.

Someone (Barilla??) makes no boil lasagne noodles. If there is a no boil manicotti, then filling the tubes ought to be really easy. Along that same line, google up "no boil lasagne recipe". There are many variations. They use regular dry lasagne noodles, not the kind sold as no-boil. Use these as a starting point for doing manicotti the same way. This method is all about the technique.

[maddezmom]

20. Cannelloni is easier but has a different texture and flavor

love them both.