I’ve never stuffed pasta before, is it worth the effort?

Time: 2 hours 45 minutes

Difficulty: 3/5

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

I recently visited a book store and I, naturally, spent most of my time in the cookbook section. Any time I’m looking at cookbooks, I look through a few of the pages to see if any of the recipes look interesting to me. Many times, I see a lot of recipes I know that I’ll never make, so I don’t decide to buy those books. This book, Italian American, was one of the few books where most of the recipes I flipped though looked good and interesting, so I decided to buy it. As far as this recipe goes, it reminded me of a baked ziti, which is nothing new to me. On top of that, it includes one of my favorite combinations: sausage, peppers, and onions. Combining that with a tomato sauce and some pasta just sounded like a can’t miss recipe.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

I used all of the ingredients that this recipe calls for. However, there are some preferred ingredients that the recipe calls for that I didn’t opt for.

1. The book calls for dried oregano, and says that home dried oregano would be ideal. However, I had a jar of dried oregano, so I decided to use that instead of let it go to waste. I doubt that the difference would’ve been that big.

2. The recipe calls for Pecorino cheese. Before reading the beginning of this book, the only Pecorino I was aware of was Romano, but apparently there’s also Pecorino Toscano. I couldn’t find the latter in any store I visited and I don’t think there are any Italian delis or stores near me that would carry it. So, I just used Pecorino Romano.

Tools:

• Food Processor

• Microplane/ Rasp style grater

• Box Grater

• Sharp knife

Cooking Review:

Prep: 25 Minutes

The prep for this recipe makes everything else in the recipe go much smoother than if you had to juggle prepping something in between steps. In preparation, I grated the garlic on the rasp style grater, chopped the onions and peppers, grated the cheese, and removed the casings from the sausage. I’m glad I bought some extra pre-grated cheese, as the block that I bought, which was about half a pound, only yielded 2 cups of cheese. Keep that in mind when shopping.

Sauce & Rigatoni: 32 Minutes

After I had the oil heated, I added the first group of ingredients to the pot. It took about a minute for the garlic to become fragrant and golden. I then added the onions and peppers. I added the black pepper in this step, as I missed it in the previous step. The onions and peppers cooked for 17 minutes as I stirred it occasionally. The peppers should be pretty easy to break apart at this point. I also added two table spoons of water during this step to prevent burning. Next, I added the crushed tomatoes and water before letting it simmer for 10 minutes. Once the sauce was done, I transferred it to a bowl and put in the refrigerator to cool. To save some time, while the sauce was being made, I had a pot of salted water coming up to a boil. About half way through the simmering step, I added the pasta to the water to cook for 10 minutes. I then drained it and coated it with some olive oil.

Sausage and Ricotta Mixture/Stuffing: 10 minutes

This is the point where you need the food processor. You could probably mix the sausage, cheese, and eggs by hand, but the food processor definitely makes it quick and easy. The cleanup wasn’t as bad as you might expect from meat and cheese in a food processor. I alternated between low and high on my machine, spending most of my time on high and stopping to push some of the less mixed portions to the bottom a few times. The total processing time may have been 3 or 4 minutes.

Stuffing the rigatoni: 45 minutes

This step kinda caught me off guard, but it shouldn’t have. It’s the name of the recipe. Anyway, I thought maybe the stuffing step would have some kind of trick to make it easier or quicker, but there isn’t other than having kids help. I don’t have any kids, so it was just me sitting for 45 minutes pushing meat though a small hole in a bag for 45 minutes. The recipe says “it takes just a few minutes,” but for a first time pasta stuffer, it definitely was a learning experience. I had to use two Ziploc bags, as I cut too big of a hole in the first one for the meat to come out easily into the rigatoni. The second bag’s smaller hole definitely made it easier to fill each rigatoni, but it still is a long process. It does get easier and faster as you go and develop a technique and flow. Just be patient and take your time to figure out what works best for you and it shouldn’t be a disaster. Once the rigatoni were all stuffed, I folded them into the sauce along with some grated cheese before adding it all to a 9x13” baking dish. I topped it all with some of the pre-grated Pecorino before baking.

Baking and Resting: 55 minutes

I baked the dish for 40 minutes. The pasta was bubbling and there were some well browned portions on top. I let it rest for 15 minutes before eating.

Analysis:

First off, when scooping this into a bowl, not seeing any meat is kinda weird. It made me feel like I was just about to eat baked pasta and tomato sauce. Anyway, the textures were very nice and interesting. The noodles were well cooked and having the stuffing inside each noodle keeps each bite interesting. It’s something I had never experienced before. It kinda made eating it more fun than the typical baked pasta. The sauce was very good, absorbing a lot of the flavor from the peppers and onions, but not leaving the peppers and onions completely flavorless. The peppers are are particularly sweet, which I really enjoyed. The choice of cheese was pretty good, as well, contributing an almost creamy consistency to some parts in addition to a nice savory cheesiness. One drawback of the this dish is, while the sauce is very good, I find the stuffing slightly lacking in flavor. It has a good texture, but it really just has a mild sausage flavor. I wish it was a little stronger. Overall, the flavors are good, even deep and complex if you focus a little. This is definitely an above average baked pasta. The real problem is the effort it takes to fill each noodle. At the same time, that is part of what makes it above average. The flavors would be the same if the sausage mixture was just added to the sauce, but the experience wouldn’t be as interesting overall. I’m giving this recipe a 8/10. It’s pretty close to a 9/10, but that stuffing step and the sausage mixture having a muted flavor holds it back from more points. Despite how long it took me to make, I wouldn’t say it’s hard. It just takes some commitment. I really appreciate and enjoyed the creativity that went into this dish, and can say that it was one of the few recipes I really had fun making and eating when I look back on it.